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I've still got rather rough idea of the renewed system and its mechanics, yet I intend to make a point that I consider important.

The core mechanic of the game is rolling pools of dice that come from Abilities. Abilities include Attributes, Skills and Proficiencies. Proficiencies always were in a league of their own, starting from TRoS and on. For that reason I put them aside at this moment and turn my attention to Attributes and Skills.

As you may already have guessed my point is as follows: with the old "roll Attribute+Skill" system gone, I see no reason for keeping two separate categories of Abilities – Attributes and Skills. Before shrugging off this idea, consider it for a moment. You may find that it actually makes sense.

There are really few things in game design that are completely new and original (that said, we all should bow before our respected authors for the genius Wound Wheel). No wonder that I have already encountered this approach of blending Attributes and Skills into one category, and the most recent example that occurs to me is A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying game. There is just one type of characteristics in this game – Abilities. Some of them you could interpret as Skills (like "Animal Handling", "Survival", "Thievery"), or even Proficiencies ("Fighting", "Marksmanship"), others as Attributes (e.g. "Agility", "Awareness", "Will"). Some Abilities do not fall into any of these categories, "Status" being a good example.

I believe that doing something of the kind would benefit this system. You may leave Proficiencies apart, but seriously: consider merging Attributes and Skills and calling them Abilities (or whatever). Maybe you'll merge Proficiencies as well, making the system even more neat.

OK, don't tell me anything like "How're we supposed to merge them if an Attribute is something that everybody has, and a Skill you may either have or not". I can see at least two ways of dealing with this issue (including a good one!). First, you may just state at the description of an Ability, that everybody starts with one free point in it. You may even call such Abilities "Basic" or something. Each Basic Ability would start with one free point.

As the second option, you may borrow even more from A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying (Did I mention that it also uses d6s?.. Never mind: no success/failure mechanic there, just stupid adding up the results ). In that system all of the Abilities start with 2 points (i.e. 2 dice). No, you can't have 0. You may have 1, and you may start with a single 1-point Ability (and get some extra points for character creation), but you have to justify it really well (for example, Hodor has 1 point in "Persuasion", and even Ned Stark has 2 points in "Thievery" ). You start to appreciate the grace of this approach when you find that you don't have to put down all those Abilities – you just have to put down the Abilities that have a value other than 2. How it works? It works fine! As good as it can get with all that constant arithmetics and a lamentable combat system...

I'm not suggesting that you, our beloved and respected authors, the furious Agamemnon, and the valorous higgins, should have all the Abilities in your game start at 2 points. They may start at 1. Or whatever you choose, – it's your call. Just try and merge them. It may work.

I'm on my way off to bed, but I thought I'd drop a quick comment on the idea. It's like 4:30 now and I'm just finishing sorting out the new economic system. It got a thumbs up from Higgins, which I consider a big freaking deal given that he has expressed a fairly weighty dislike of abstract wealth systems before.

In the middle of play, the suggested change wouldn't affect anything. It won't matter if Brawn is a skill or an attribute if I call for a Brawn roll. The way tapping works, it won't matter for that either. The main places it would change things is in character creation and advancement. At present, they are split because the three categories are functionally different outside of the context of a simple conflict.
> Proficiencies are very specific and have their own sub-rules in the forms of emphasis and maneuvers.
> Attributes are universal and everyone has two points in each at character creation, but they are also different in their values plug into things in a way skills and proficiencies do not. Attributes also cost more than proficiencies or skills to raise. There are also derived attributes that can only be raised by increasing their governing attributes.
> Skills are less expensive than attributes and don't require the extra stuff that proficiencies do.

For the purposes of just being able to reference things, they are handy as separate categories. Character advancement is a good example of this, but also just explaining something. Even if we call attributes 'skills,' the moment I have to be able to refer to 'basic skills' as those that every character has points in automatically and that plug into whatever, we've gone back to having attributes by a different name.

For character creation, the priority chart does a nice job of helping focus your character at a glance. If we merge attributes and skills, you wind up with Social Class, Abilities, Proficiencies, and Traits. That isn't awful (save for the above issues about now needing to explain why not-attributes are handled differently than regular skills), but if we merged proficiencies in there as suggested I suspect we'd be better off dropping the priority chart entirely and just handing the players 40 "character points" or whatever and letting them build their characters completely à la carte.

I guess the questions I have are:
1) What advantage do you see in this?
2) and what is your perceived difference between having "Basic abilities" and "regular abilities" vs just having "attributes" and "skills" now?

If I've missed your point somewhere, I apologize in advance. I've spent four hours with a bottle of Jack Daniels, cross-referencing three lists of medieval pricing data. The sun will soon be up, and I must sleep.

Thank you, Agamemnon, for your post-midnight answer. And I beg you, please, don't apologize – it's actually me who's writing galimatias on your forums...

Anyway, I'll try to answer you questions. You see, as far as my experience goes, if a game features Attributes and Skills, these two pieces have different functions and usually interact in one way or another. One of the most common mechanics involves Skills being based on Attributes. In some instances players just roll their Attribute that corresponds to the Skill in question, etc. That said, when you see a system where there's no apparent difference or interaction between Attributes and Skills and they seem essentially the same, the question comes naturally: why two categories.

Look, I admit, that I haven't seen the character creation rules, and probably in that part of the system the difference between Attributes and Skills is more evident. But you've admitted it yourself:

Agamemnon wrote:In the middle of play, the suggested change wouldn't affect anything. It won't matter if Brawn is a skill or an attribute if I call for a Brawn roll. The way tapping works, it won't matter for that either.

And I believe that this is important. As we all may agree, the system of rules for a game is a complicated mechanism in which every piece must do its own part. And when such piece does one thing and then starts acting just the same as a different piece of the system, it may mean that something's wrong with the whole design.

It may not be apparent, but I understand your reasoning perfectly well. What's really happening is that we're looking at this issue from different angles. You see the system from the point of view of the creator, who's just evolved it from something different. Attributes, Skills and Proficiencies all had their place in 'Bastards, and when you decided to make changes, you took them all as they were and tried to make them work in a different manner.

I'm seeing this system as a new different product. I see seemingly different elements that work the same in the game. And to me it looks as if these elements are here in the system not because it's the best design choice, but rather because you took the blocks that formed 'Bastards and now you're building something new from these same blocks.

Another display of an "old block" is the priority chart that you've mentioned. Everybody likes the priority chart, including myself, but if the system is different it may not work, and it would be indeed the best option to remove it if it doesn't work here. I have some experience in video editing, and I've learnt that sometimes you've got to cut even the best footage to make the whole video look good. Same goes for game design and any other creative work.

In the light of the above, my answer to your first question is this: the advantage of this change is that (if done properly) it would make the system more integral, comprehensive and streamlined. And the second question wouldn't ever rise if you wipe any difference whatsoever and leave just Abilities (and probably Proficiencies, 'cause that's different story).

It's your call in the end, of course, you may just close this discussion and do as you see fit (and rightfully so). What I'm trying to do is to push you further beyond any borders, including the borders set by 'Bastards' system, that may be pulling you, guys, back right now.

And one last question to the whole community: am I really talking gibberish here? 'Cause if you say that I am, I'll just shut it and stay quiet. Is there anyone here to whom it also seems that the current Attributes-Skills interaction is wrong?

Siggi wrote:am I really talking gibberish here?

From my point of view, you're not. The line between Attributes and Skills was blurred. But I can see Agamemnon's point. I'm not really sure if I'm more pro-Siggi or pro-Agamemnon at the moment, so... yes, maybe you should discuss it further and we shall see.
(I admit it, my inner-Korbel is heavily biased against Agamemnon, for introducing D&D-like "modifiers"... but hey, every time I try to come up with a better system, I realize I'm utterly unable to, so the inner-Korbel really needs to shut up)

Siggi wrote:but seriously: consider merging Attributes and Skills and calling them Abilities (or whatever)

A few of things from my perspective:
a) we will have a couple of derived attributes now; there are do derived skills; picking out which of the abilities form new ones from a long list would be tedious
b) attributes are somewhat broader than skills, so, they will be tapped more often; separation makes the broad ones easier to glance over
c) giving some of the abilities starting rank of 2, while others would be 0... that sounds like two different categories to me, and we're definitely not giving a minimum of 2 for every skill, your own Ned Stark thievery rank 2 being an excellent example on why not to do that
d) for me at least, being one huge list, ASOIAF RPG character sheets didn't give a good overview of the character; curiously, I didn't have the same issue with FATE (I think the pyramid helps)

Siggi wrote:You see, as far as my experience goes, if a game features Attributes and Skills, these two pieces have different functions and usually interact in one way or another. One of the most common mechanics involves Skills being based on Attributes.

Sure. But is that really the only valid way to do it?

Siggi wrote:That said, when you see a system where there's no apparent difference or interaction between Attributes and Skills and they seem essentially the same, the question comes naturally: why two categories.

For the reasons I outlined here.

Agamemnon wrote:> Proficiencies are very specific and have their own sub-rules in the forms of emphasis and maneuvers.
> Attributes are universal and everyone has two points in each at character creation, but they are also different in their values plug into things in a way skills and proficiencies do not. Attributes also cost more than proficiencies or skills to raise. There are also derived attributes that can only be raised by increasing their governing attributes.
> Skills are less expensive than attributes and don't require the extra stuff that proficiencies do.

For the purposes of just being able to reference things, they are handy as separate categories. Character advancement is a good example of this, but also just explaining something. Even if we call attributes 'skills,' the moment I have to be able to refer to 'basic skills' as those that every character has points in automatically and that plug into whatever, we've gone back to having attributes by a different name.

Regardless of whether or not a priority chart would be used, attributes are allocated differently at character creation than skills are. This is both because everyone automatically has points on each attribute, but also because derived attributes are a thing.

Even if we said "Okay, let's call everything a skill" and made them all cost the same amount to improve:
> There's one group of skills that represents your basic abilities that everyone automatically gets 2 points in at character creation, that can create derived skills, and plug into the system in specific ways that no other skills do.
> There's one group of skills that is hyper-specific to combat and has maneuvers associated with them and default to one another for half-value at BTN or to one of the first group at full-value at FTN6
> And a third category that doesn't do either of these things, is more specific than the first, less than the second but defaults to anything at full-value at FTN6.

Regardless of what you call them, mechanically the three are distinct categories. Calling the three things one thing just removes your ability to easily reference them for no discernable benefit. Any talk of merging anything has to address that.

Siggi wrote:And I believe that this is important. As we all may agree, the system of rules for a game is a complicated mechanism in which every piece must do its own part. And when such piece does one thing and then starts acting just the same as a different piece of the system, it may mean that something's wrong with the whole design.

The only real similarity that can be claimed is that a simple conflict can be based on any one of them using the same core mechanic. I'd argue that to be a good thing, unless someone wants to make a solid case for (and what the advantage would be in) making attribute checks resolved with a different mechanic than skill checks.

For the reasons I've restated above, I disagree with the premise that the parts are "acting the same." The categories were not arbitrarily chosen for the sake of having them.

Siggi wrote:In the light of the above, my answer to your first question is this: the advantage of this change is that (if done properly) it would make the system more integral, comprehensive and streamlined.

I mean, I enjoy streamlining wherever possible without sacrificing something useful.. but weren't you the one calling simplification overrated?

Siggi wrote:You say, you're streamlining? I say, you're simplifying. And simplification is a bit overrated to say the least. All the best things in live are complicated: books, music, movies, relationships, games...

Siggi wrote:And the second question wouldn't ever rise if you wipe any difference whatsoever and leave just Abilities (and probably Proficiencies, 'cause that's different story).

The only way we could "wipe any difference whatsoever" is to just assume that players had 2 dice in everything by default, and then boil the entire game down to just the core mechanic shown in the quick-start guide. The moment you start basing anything else in the game on what used to be attributes (plugging brawn into blood loss, DR, AV, or encumberance, plugging reflex in as the core of the melee combat pool, using will as part of sorcery, and so on) you've gone back to creating a separate class of skills that are used differently.

If you were going that far, you might as well drop the very concept of attributes as a thing to be measured. Make it so that players don't have any kind of "Raw abilities" at all and measure everything with skills. Add in a skill replacement for Will and Perception and then you'd lift things with Athletics. This isn't a new concept. ASOIAF had it set up this way, but so does Fate, Chronica Feudalis, and a handful of others off the top of my head.

Ignoring the mechanics entirely, attributes have the handy effect of drawing rough outlines of the character through mechanics. To borrow from D&D, Str 18 Dex 8 Con 15 Int 8 Wis 10 Cha 16 paints a very different picture at a than Str 8 Dex 10 Con 9 Int 18 Wis 17 Cha 8. Even if we ignored the modifiers the stats might bring and assumed all of the stuff in the system was based on skill rolls.. it's easy to look at the two and see very different characters. The former is a bit of a dumb-but-charming jock type, charismatic barbarian or the like. The latter is clearly a brilliant scholar who, even if he invested heavily in social skills isn't naturally predisposed to being a people person.

Maybe it's purely an aesthetic argument, but I haven't come across a game where eliminating attributes and going skills-only seemed to be a significant advantage to the design, but every time I do have seen it done it has had the disadvantage of obscuring the "at-a-glance" of who the character is.

Higgins wrote: A few of things from my perspective:
a) we will have a couple of derived attributes now; there are do derived skills; picking out which of the abilities form new ones from a long list would be tedious
b) attributes are somewhat broader than skills, so, they will be tapped more often; separation makes the broad ones easier to glance over
c) giving some of the abilities starting rank of 2, while others would be 0... that sounds like two different categories to me, and we're definitely not giving a minimum of 2 for every skill, your own Ned Stark thievery rank 2 being an excellent example on why not to do that
d) for me at least, being one huge list, ASOIAF RPG character sheets didn't give a good overview of the character; curiously, I didn't have the same issue with FATE (I think the pyramid helps)

All of this.

Fine, I get it. Well, at least now I'm sure that you've considered this option and discarded it for quite a few reasons that you deem important. A negative result is still a result, and I'm not pressing this topic any longer. At least, until the rules are out.

Thank you for your time and your answers!

Siggi wrote: