Battle of the Attributes II

[Jurgun]

I'm curious about the possibilities of this. What do you see as being the benefits and hurdles to playing "D6 proper" with cliches? I'm wondering what the feel of the game would become when combining the (sort-of) crunch of the attribute with the more wide-open role-playing of something like a cliche. It's an idea worth exploring...my initial reaction is that if I were to use cliches with D6 rules, I'd prefer to drop attributes altogether (as you mentioned). I love Risus, by the way. The Ghostbusters connection helped to draw me to D6, in fact.

Well, the primary benefit is personalization. You can enjoy playing an archetype without the restrictions of a D20ish class system. The problem then becomes one of balance. If you have one or two cliches that cover most of the things a character does, why bother with the other attributes. I can see it becoming a three attribute system. Cliche 1, Cliche 2, and Everything Else.

I could dip into the Risus toolbox a bit further and borrow its combat system. If you lose an opposed roll that cliche has a -1D penalty for the remainder of combat. That can be kind of harsh but in Risus you can fall back on other cliches. If you're a Gun Totin' Ninja you can switch to your Gun Totin' ability if your Ninja skills are penalized. I'm not sure how I would justify such a mechanism from a (sorta) crunchy perspective, but it does encourage more cliches/attributes. Different cliches could even share some of the same skills.

Such a mechanism may also eliminate the use body points or wounds. Not very crunchy, but I'm not sure it would be a big loss. I already stress that wounds can represent such things as physical injury, sanity loss, or a tactical disadvantage. I'm about ready to chuck healing altogether. It seems to boil down to either you have magical healing or you don't. You're instantly back in the game or you're dead/injured for a few weeks, effectively ending the dungeon crawl for you.

I don't know, we'll see. The basic notion I'm playing around with here is not only different attributes for different genres, but perhaps even different attributes for different characters.

[Lee Torres]

Something I've been reading (acquired on a very small spending spree after tax returns) is HeroQuest 2nd Edition. It has a very interesting character building method that might be a good match for your idea - not quite cliches, but in the same conceptual ballpark. Well worth looking into! It's almost a blend of Cliches and Aspects, in that a character can have a rating like (to borrow an example from the rules) "Everything I Touch Turns to Crap" which can be used to inadvertently sabotage something as a last ditch, if another ability doesn't pan out, or "Born and Raised in Russia" or even "Assume Any Point of View" to ingratiate your character to groups that they may have nothing in common with, or ideological enmity toward. Beyond the abilities, characters can also have narrative hooks, like "Will go to any length to thwart the fiendish plots of the Nazis."

In short, if you can solve a problem with it, it's an ability. It's very interesting to see how characters are built in that, with abilities that seem very traditional for most NPCs up to some very unusual ones for characters...

[Lee Torres]

I was considering, based on the "Ingenuity" mechanic on Miek's Battlestar Galactica rules elsewhere on the board, that a Narrative Hook could work the same way, as a reserve dice pool to be drawn from when the character is pursuing whatever the Narrative Hook would require - so if the hook was "Free the enslaved peoples of Hyboria" then the character could draw from that pool when pursuing a Slaver caravan across the tundra to free his countrymen... So a built-in mechanic to enforce the goals of the character, and reward in-character behavior. Pool should recharge from achieving milestones toward that goal, and possibly tie it in to character advancement between adventures...

[retriever]

Lee: I like the Narrative Hook idea.

Whill and Lee: Thanks for the Indy info. It is an odd set for Indy D6, but I guess WEG was still finding its feet with expanding the system at the time. In a way, I can almost see Tech in the setting (considering the German flying wing and all). Still, it is a bit weird, although I think my biggest issue is having split Dex plus Mechanical. That seems to really spread Dexterity/Agility too thin (while keeping the combo-rific SW Perception intact...).

Jurgun: I think maybe we approach Risus cliches a bit differently (maybe I've been doing it wrong...if that's possible with such a game...). I treat something like Gun-totin' ninja as a single cliche, so if you lose dice there, you lose it for the whole cliche. However, the character may also have Former underworld hitman, so those dice can pick up the slack when the ninja cliche drops. With the way I run it, I think that D6 combat is better, since Risus combat often becomes a slippery slope from which it's tough to recover. In fact, I kind of think of Risus combat as just a necessary part of the game (because it's an RPG) that just gives you a way to resolve things easily so you can move on with the story...

[Jurgun]

Jurgun: I think maybe we approach Risus cliches a bit differently (maybe I've been doing it wrong...if that's possible with such a game...). I treat something like Gun-totin' ninja as a single cliche, so if you lose dice there, you lose it for the whole cliche.

Eh, it's Risus. Whatever works.

With the way I run it, I think that D6 combat is better, since Risus combat often becomes a slippery slope from which it's tough to recover. In fact, I kind of think of Risus combat as just a necessary part of the game (because it's an RPG) that just gives you a way to resolve things easily so you can move on with the story...

I agree. I was kicking around some ideas for attributes, which in started pulling me Risus' direction. But its combat system is not what I want at all. (Though I do appreciate some of the ideas about narrative play that resulted.)

I still like the idea of a personalized attribute. But now I'm leaning towards some sort of mind, body, spirit permutation with one more attribute for the character's profession/cliche/class.

[retriever]

I still like the idea of a personalized attribute. But now I'm leaning towards some sort of mind, body, spirit permutation with one more attribute for the character's profession/cliche/class.

Well...while I was thinking "all-cliche" before (if cliches are used), I have to admit that there's something in the simplicity of this setup that I really like. Might be cool to have some specific abilities attached to some cliches (e.g. a specific meaning for sneak attack for a rogue) while still leaving the roleplaying options wide open (e.g. I think rogues should be good at skill X, therefore I'd like to use my rogue attribute here).

[Lee Torres]

If you haven't, you might want to check this out: http://www.wegfansite.com/forum/show...ig-Thing/page4 - it might provide some ideas, since it seems we're going in similar directions...

[Jurgun]

If you haven't, you might want to check this out: http://www.wegfansite.com/forum/show...ig-Thing/page4 - it might provide some ideas, since it seems we're going in similar directions...

Doh! I forgot I'd read that. Just last month too. Man I'm getting old.

I'll have to go back and read Ron Fricke's idea. RobotechSouthernCrossFan's post is probably most similar to what I was thinking. All skills belong to the base attributes, but a half dozen or so are shifted over to the profession attribute. Changing professions is acomplished by renaming the attribute and swapping out skills. As Retriever mentioned, the profession should get something special, but I'm not sure what.

So if I understand your post a character would have a broad Marine skill. How do you decide what the is the limit of the skill, and what does it cost to advance?

[Lee Torres]

So if I understand your post a character would have a broad Marine skill. How do you decide what the is the limit of the skill, and what does it cost to advance?

The limit of the skill would be determined by the GM and the Player - for instance, a Star Fleet Marine in a Star Trek setting would have a different mix of skills than a Pulp Era Marine in 1936 Shanghai. The GM would need to enforce a veto if the Player insisted that his Marine training qualified him to assess the history of an ancient artifact or some other task clearly not in the domain of a typical Marine's skills, though, like piloting a 747 or the Space Shuttle.

For advancement, since the occupational cluster is probably closer to an Attribute than a Skill, I'd set the cost to advance along the same lines as increasing an attribute.

[Lee Torres]

I think the best way to handle what RobotechSouthernCrossFan was saying (if I understood his intent) is to blend two old-school methods, the D6 System's Templates and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay's Careers, so that a character could begin as an MOS 11 Bravo (Infantry), then move to an OCS Template, then either change career (perhaps to a civilian pursuit) or maintain the Officer template and steadily increase it, like a Life Path, until the character is ready to enter play. Adding things like Special Forces Training into the mix allows a character to progress through a military career and come out a very different high ranking officer than another character that may have taken a divergent (either safer or more hazardous) path. Same holds true for civilian careers, or fantasy-setting occupations as well.

I'd suggest if combining Templates with a Career or Life Path system to change every template after the first to either add full dice in the skills not repeated from one Template to the next and increase skills that are repeated by pips, to avoid having someone with a superhuman ability to drive or shoot a rifle or survive in a desert environment simply because they had multiple templates duplicating those skills. Maybe something along the same lines of how Traveller has traditionally taken a character through "Terms" of service.

That said, the shortened template-style occupations I was suggesting and this notion may also be compatible. The only difference is one, while probably faster, requires more policing from the GM, and one is slower, more detailed and requires less "managerial" oversight.

I could see value in having both, actually. For a certain Space Opera campaign I've run in the past I'd likely use the Template/Careers/Life Path option, but for a Pulp Thirties campaign I've run I'd probably use the more "fast & loose" method.