On Fairness and Rolling for Ability Scores

Ah, the age old question that comes up when first starting a new campaign - "are we rolling for ability scores or using point buy?"  There are good arguments for both camps, with many gamers having a strong preference for one or the other.  Rolling for ability scores is more organic, and it can be quicker and less fiddly.  Unfortunately, it can also lead to some pretty significant power disparities.  It sucks to be the guy who rolled 15, 13, 13, 12, 10, 10 (huh, that looks an awful lot like my Bard's array in the Pathfinder game that I'm currently playing...) when everyone else in the party has at least one 17 or 18 (pre-racial), and much stronger secondary abilities than a mere 13.

Granted, this isn't a problem for everyone.  Indeed, a lot of players really like taking up the challenge of playing whatever array the Fates have granted them, which goes hand in hand with being ok with a weaker character.  The flaws can be what makes the character fun and memorable.  But a lot of players prefer as much balance between PCs as possible.  What gets really awkward is when you have both types of players mixed in the same group.

I usually lean more toward preferring a balanced starting point, as there are other ways of roleplaying flaws than having gimped ability scores.  But I noticed a funny thing while building several characters for 13th Age playtesting: I was building them using point buy, without even looking at the sample arrays in the back of the book, but they all ended up having the EXACT same array.  16, 14, 14, 12, 10, 8.  How boring.  Flipping through the sample arrays in general there is a heavy preference for even numbers, which makes sense because it's optimal starting out, but when you hit 4th level that ability boost that's supposed to be so awesome and meaningful ends up doing exactly nothing.  I found myself yearning for more "organic" arrays with a mix of odd and even numbers, and even looking back at those ability-rolling days with fondness.  Until I joined that Pathfinder game.

What I've come up with is a hybrid of the two methods.  Below I've listed 20 arrays, many of which are from the sample arrays in the core book, but I did some tweaking to provide more odd values.  You might also notice that some arrays are repeated, and I left out certain types of arrays that I personally find extremely unappealing (anything that starts with 18 pre-racial, anything with three 8's, or even two 8's).  Anyways, the idea is that when you create your character you roll a d20 to determine which array you get.  It's random and organic, but it's still relatively balanced as every single array uses the standard 28 point buy found in the 13th Age core rulebook.  I think it could potentially be a very nice middle ground between the two camps.

1. 16, 16, 14, 10, 8, 8
2. 16, 15, 14, 10, 10, 8
3. 16, 14, 14, 12, 10, 8
4. 16, 14, 12, 12, 10, 10
5. 15, 15, 15, 10, 10, 8
6. 15, 14, 14, 12, 10, 10
7. 14, 14, 14, 14, 12, 8
8. 15, 14, 13, 13, 10, 10
9. 15, 14, 13, 13, 9, 11
10. 16, 15, 13, 12, 9, 8
11. 16, 14, 14, 11, 11, 8
12. 16, 13, 13, 13, 10, 9
13. 16, 13, 13, 12, 10, 10
14. 15, 15, 14, 12, 10, 8
15. 15, 15, 13, 13, 10, 8
16. 16, 14, 14, 12, 10, 8
17. 16, 15, 13, 11, 11, 8
18. 15, 15, 14, 12, 10, 8
19. 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10
20. 16, 14, 13, 13, 10, 8

Again, this list of arrays is specifically for 13th Age, though it would seem perfectly at home in D&D 4E or 3.x/PF.  For older editions where ability scores tended to be lower you'd obviously want to tweak the list.  And of course you could make tweaks based on personal aesthetic preferences as well, including running a "low-powered" or "high-powered" game.

13th Age SRD

The 13th Age System Reference Document is live!  All the crunch you need to play the game.  While I'd still wholeheartedly recommend the book, this is great for groups where not everyone has a copy (now nobody has an excuse!).  It's also extremely useful to know what's fair game for public use.  A big step forward!

On Skill Lists and Split Perception

Skill lists are a tough mechanic to design in an RPG.  Having a longer list of skills increases granularity and can fine-tune character concepts, but it also has a tendency to increase specialization to a point where it's tough to build the kind of character that you have in mind.  For example, in D&D 3.x if you want to be stealthy, you need to sink points into both Hide and Move Silently.  If you're physically fit, you'll probably want Swim, Climb, and Jump.  This might leave few available skills left for other aspects of your character concept.  Contrast that with 4E, where Stealth is one skill, and Athletics is the counterpart to the latter skill group.  A short skill list has its own problems though, with the reduction in granularity limiting customization and resulting in certain actions being "forced" into a particular skill.  A good example of this is the 4E Nature skill, which encapsulates not only the Knowledge skill, but also things like Survival, Handle Animal, and possibly Ride.  In 3.x, these used to all be separate skills, using Int, Wis, Cha, and Dex, respectively!  So now you need to have a good Wis in order to be good any all of those things.

What does that have to do with Star Wars?  Well, it highlights that, by and large, the skill list in Edge of the Empire is a nice middle ground between the two most recent editions of D&D, and is possibly my favorite skill list of the games I've played or read (with the caveat that I still like the freeform Backgrounds of 13th Age better than any skill list).

Social Skills
The strongest element of the EotE skill list is the granularity of its social skills, to the point where it's actually interesting to build and play a "party face."  Going back to D&D, you'd usually just bump up Cha as high as it would go, and most of the social skills were conveniently tied to that ability score (with the exception of the Knowledge skills that often help when going into social encounters).  In EotE social skills are widely spread amongst the different Characteristics: Intellect for the various Knowledge skills, Presence for Charm, Leadership, Negotiation, and Cool (which opposes certain social skills, and may be called upon as a "defense roll" as opposed to the NPC rolling the skill), Willpower for Coercion and Discipline (which opposes the social skills that Cool doesn't), and Cunning for Deception, Streetwise, and possibly Perception (if you're wrapping Insight/Sense Motive into that skill).  Now it's a lot tougher to shortcut that "face" build!

The social split encourages teamwork in social encounters, since no PC is likely to have equally high values in 4 of the 6 characteristics, and that's a lot of individual skills to keep up with.  Rather, the system seems to encourage PCs to pick an aspect of social encounters that they can contribute well in, so everyone can feel the need to participate in some way.  Of course you can still make a more focused "face" character, but they'll still be better in some areas than others depending on their highest Characteristics (likely Presence), and it will be XP-intensive to keep all of the requisite skills high.  More important are the Talents, especially in specializations like Politico, which give the "face" a huge edge while still letting anyone else with a decent dice pool succeed (if, for example, the party is split).

This works because humans are social creatures, and there are a lot of different ways that we interact with each other.  Very few people can say they're equally comfortable talking with anyone; a senator, a scientist, a drunk at the bar, and a black market arms dealer are all going to be very different experiences which require very different approaches.  By comparison, I'd say that the D&D social skills (or, more accurately, the Charisma attribute) are overly abstracted and thus less capable of modeling these nuances.  Of course it helps that EotE is designed as a game where you survive on the fringes of the Galaxy, probably by navigating various social opportunities, whereas D&D can support social adventures but is ultimately built on the premise of killing monsters and taking their stuff.

"Split" Skills

There is one area where this increase in granularity can cause problems, though.  Specifically, some of the skills have a great deal of overlap, with the biggest offenders being Cool/Discipline and Perception/Vigilance.

Cool/Discipline
I think I've made my peace with the Cool/Discipline split.  They could certainly be combined into one skill pretty easily, but explanations for the reasoning behind the split on the Order 66 podcast brought me around to the designer's line of thinking as well.  Actually, it was encapsulated best by the memorable quote from a listener in the chat: "Han Solo has Cool, stormtroopers have Discipline."  In other words, Han Solo projects a certain cocky confidence, and it lets him do some pretty daring stuff like chase a couple of stormtroopers down a hall on the Death Star, but once he sees a room full of reinforcements, he panics, crumbles, and runs the other way.  Stormtroopers, on the other hand, probably look pretty awkward in most social situations, and don't project much beyond simple uniformity.  But when a firefight breaks out, they've got the military training to not panic, and to just follow their orders.  From a general gaming perspective most systems would wrap both into a single concept, but for modeling a particularly iconic scene, I think it works for a Star Wars game.

Cool is ultimately more social; making yourself look like you belong, and also being able to read everyone else in the room well enough to take advantage of opportunities (which is why it's also an initiative skill).  Discipline is just having that inner, well, discipline; you stick with what you've got to do despite what's going on around you.

Perception/Vigilance
My group (somewhat erroneously) has been oversimplifying this dichotomy into Perception = active, Vigilance = passive.  It's easy to fall into that trap, partially because the case for splitting Perception into two different skills is, in my opinion, the weakest of the "split skills."

I get some of the reasons for the split.  It provides more freedom with Characteristics for a character that wants to be perceptive, since you can achieve the concept with a high Cunning OR Willpower.  There's also a LOT to be said for splitting it up when you're using one of the skills to determine initiative, especially considering that many gamers already consider Perception to be a "super skill" in most games.  But there are also a lot of negatives that go along with the split.

For one thing, Perception already covers a lot of what Vigilance is supposed to represent.  Perception is stated to be applied when looking out for a potential ambush.  And yet, Vigilance is supposed to be a sort of passive perception with regard to sensing imminent danger (which is why it's used for initiative).  But that basically relegates Vigilance to initiative rolls proper, and the little side example of ret-conning that a character brought along some small piece of gear (which Destiny Points can already do).

More importantly (since EotE is a narrative game), it can be tough to explain why a PC that's terrible at noticing things in general (low Cunning, no ranks in Perception) is all of the sudden amazing at noticing certain situational things (i.e. danger), especially if Perception is also useable for detecting danger.  For example, I've done a lot of invasive plant control (walking around the woods searching for a specific shade of green, shape, etc., often at a distance) and bird surveys (mostly by sound).  These activities require a lot of active concentration, and would fall under the umbrella of Perception.  But the thing is, I'm generally more alert to what's going on in my environment (I notice a lot of small details while out hiking) precisely BECAUSE I have prior experience focusing on very active perception.  The more you do something, the more it becomes second nature, and you can do it without thinking about it.  I just can't imagine anyone being particularly vigilant if they didn't have that kind of awareness that would fall under the Perception skill, and that's a pretty big narrative disconnect to me.

Obviously re-combining the skills is not going to be an effective solution at this point.  Vigilance is too tied up into the initiative system to get wrapped up into Perception.  Perception + initiative would be too much of a no-brainer pick that no PC would be built without it.  Plus whichever Characteristic you didn't use would go down in value, as both Cunning and Willpower are already associated with relatively few skills.  So I think the biggest tool for dealing with the issue is probably awareness of the issue.  If the skills are so tied together anyways, why not ask the player to "roll a Perception or Vigilance check," embracing the fact that they're often interchangeable?  Or you can go the opposite route, and in the case of spotting an ambush you can houserule that it's actually more appropriate to use Vigilance than Perception.  Maybe it might help to think about Vigilance as the "Resilience" of Perception; it applies when you're exhausted or distracted, and being good at Vigilance but bad at Perception simply means you have a lot of mental endurance (or you just get really paranoid when you're tired).  And, of course, there's no harm in favoring Perception over Vigilance since initiative is such a high stakes roll.  Viewing it from the initiative lens, you could even think of Vigilance more like having fast reflexes - you didn't notice the attack before anyone else, but you sure can react to it faster.

On Prolonged Actions (Or Repeated Skill Checks)

I was playing Edge of the Empire with my group yesterday, and after several sessions of being unable to catch a breather and repair our ship's Hull Trauma, the party finally scrounged together some funds and some downtime.  Naturally, our Wookiee Mechanic wanted to assist the repair crew that we hired since his Solid Repairs talent would essentially let us repair a "free" point of HT, which is crucial given that we're strapped for credits.

One of the other players asked "is that +1 per day of repairing the ship, or just +1 to the total?"  This player's system-of-choice is Pathfinder so he tends to lean toward system mastery (gaming the system), and I immediately replied that while it's not spelled out exactly in the rules and thus is open to GM interpretation, repairing the ship should be a single "action" regardless of how many days it took (which the GM agreed with).  The answer was pretty reflexive to me, but it got me thinking about the deeper issue at hand here: I really dislike the concept of repeated skill use in an RPG.

This includes things like making a skill check for each hour of work on a multi-day repair job.  Failing a Lockpicking check (in D&D, usually) and immediately saying "can I try again?"  Encountering a room full of half a dozen traps and being tasked with rolling to disarm Each.  One.  Individually.

The One Ring actually has a rule for this, called Prolonged Actions.  It's always been one of my least favorite rules in the game, to the point where I've never even considered bringing it up.  Here's the justification in the rules (pg. 22 of the LMB, emphasis mine) - "Prolonged actions are particularly suited to evoke an atmosphere of tension, but may also be employed when the acting characters want to tackle a difficult task with caution, and have the time to do it."  Basically, they're rules on how to take a single skill check and break it into multiple skill checks.

I would argue that such a game mechanic is completely and utterly pointless.  Why would it benefit cautious players to attempt Prolonged Actions?  Because the result is not at the mercy of a single die roll, but rather the more rolls you make, the closer your end result is likely to be to the average.  At that point, why not just "take 10" (to use a D&D term) and dispense with the skill check altogether?  After all, by allowing multiple rolls you're already establishing that the situation is one in which there is plenty of time for "repeated attempts," so you're going to make it anyways.  Why not just cut to the chase?

There's a fundamental rule that's usually called out in most RPG books but is easily forgotten by some players, and that is that a skill check should only be rolled when there is a risk for failure or when there would be some otherwise dramatic consequences.  If you can try something as many times as you want, there is implicitly no risk for failure.  Let's go back to the examples above.

1. So the Wookiee helps repair the ship, along with a retinue of professional mechanics in a proper facilities.  Is there any question that the ship will get repaired?  No?  Well, there's not even a roll required (in our game, the GM wisely did not ask for a Mechanics check for that very reason).  It's worth keeping in mind that the talent doesn't give you +1 HT for each Mechanics check made, but rather "whenever he repairs a vehicle or starship."  That's whether or not a roll is required.
2. If the Rogue (or insert similar archetype based on the game in question) goes up to a lock to pick it, just let him do it if there's a reasonable chance of success.  Because he'll just try again anyways.  Now, it's another story if there are alert guards standing just on the other side of the door (for example), in which case failure on the first attempt probably means that too much noise was made in the attempt.  That's FAILURE, as opposed to "I didn't quite get it...this time."
3. There's nothing that annoys me more than a dungeon crawl where the Rogue scouts ahead and there's 20 minutes of the GM saying "make a Perception check.  Ok, you see a trap there, roll to Disable it."  And the room is full of traps.  It's boring, even if it means the Rogue is filling his niche.  I'd rather a single Perception check notice all of the traps, with a single roll to disable ALL of them (unless there are different types of traps of varying difficulties, that are described narratively to keep things interesting).  Honestly I'd rather go the old school route of describing all of your actions in detail (because skill checks didn't exist yet) and succeeding when your idea made sense.  Potentially tedius in a different sort of way (stopping every 10 ft to probe with your wooden pole, anyone?), but at least the game tends toward more immersive detail.

I would be remiss if I didn't make note of a possible exception to my aversion to Prolonged Actions (in whatever form they take depending on the game), and that is the classic Time Limit (though there may be other situational exceptions).  For example, you've got 4 rounds to disable this trap and then open that lock and get through the door, while being attacked by zombies, GO!  Stressful situation + time limit means that every roll has an implicit drama attached to it.  You fail a check, that's another round that you have to deal with complications.  Or someone less skilled has to drop what they're doing to make an attempt.  The results are interesting.  Ultimately, go with the Rule of Cool whenever possible.  If something is so routine that the results aren't all that interesting one way or the other, let it happen.

Galactic Coordinates Reference

Time really does fly, doesn't it?  Hard to believe I haven't posted anything in a month.  Been busy with non-gaming stuff, but I've also been pecking away at a little side project that I finally finished.  It's an Excel spreadsheet that lists every system, their coordinates, and any major hyperlanes that pass through them from the galactic map on pages 328-9 of the Edge of the Empire core rulebook.  By default it's sorted alphabetically by system so that you can locate any system easily on the map.  While you can sort by hyperlane as well, it's probably easier to just look at the map to see what systems are along the route.

GMs and players alike might find it useful.  Enjoy!

Updated Reference Sheets for Edge of the Empire

I had some reference sheets floating around from the Beta, but now that my gaming group has started playing again with the core rulebook I decided I'd revise the sheets (since we went through that first session using slightly erroneous rules).

Here they are, for anyone who wants them.  There's a general reference sheet with an extremely consolidated table for spending Advantage/Threat, a list of weapon qualities, and some other misc. bits of information that I found myself wanting to have handy in-game.  Second is a starship reference sheet, which has benefitted from a more comprehensive overhaul since the beta version.  It's got the pilot and crew maneuvers/actions (though I didn't include obvious and intuitive things like making Gunnery checks), the Chase rules, Astrogation details, and notes on Sensors and repairing Hull Trauma.

These sheets may not be absolutely perfect for everyone.  Some people might prefer separate tables for Advantage and Threat, for example, but personally I like the concise table since many of the effects are mirror images of each other, and I tend to improvise a lot anyways.  I also left out some information that probably wouldn't come up too often (Bacta rules, some of the less commonly-encountered weapon qualities), and certainly didn't clutter the sheets up with basics like dice symbols, which I've got down.

That said, I'm sure there are plenty of gamers out there who think along the same lines as me, so if these look useful use them!

Flow of Information

The issue of Perception and how it grants PCs information in TTRPGs has been a popular topic in the blogosphere lately.  It's also one that I've struggled with personally.

To start with, most players consider Perception to be the most powerful/useful skill in D&D 4E.  I know I would train it with virtually all of my characters.  But then a funny thing happened; I started reading and researching more narrative-centric RPGs with their fail-forward philosophies and what-not, and my character ideas began to deliberately ditch Perception.  For one thing it's often not an "active" skill, but rather one that the GM calls upon PCs to roll, and second things can simply get more interesting (albeit more difficult as well) if you fail a Perception check.  I'd rather have to claw my way out of a tight spot that I could have avoided if it was memorable as opposed to getting some piece of information that basically tells me what's up.

Unfortunately this doesn't always work in practice.  In the Pathfinder campaign that I'm currently playing in there was a lot of "roll Perception" results as we were exploring a dungeon.  Failure came with its typical problems; players knew something was up and then either got no information, or got a surprise scythe-blade trap to the back.  But success was equally boring.  "Rogue, you find another trap there."  "I roll Disable Device."  "Ok, you disabled the trap."  Lather, rinse, repeat.  I'm glad the Rogue got to be useful (he certainly hasn't been in combat), but it still wasn't very exciting.

A while ago there was an article on Thought Crime that explored this very issue.

Dungeon World

Since a lot of the blog articles reference Dungeon World, we'll step back for a second and examine how Perception is handled in that system.  One of the Basic Moves in Dungeon World is "Discern Realities."  You roll (2D6) +Wis and on a 10+ you can ask 3 questions, and one question on a 7-9 (the "partial success" ubiquitous in Dungeon World rolls).  The list of questions is as follows:

• What happened here recently?
• What is about to happen?
• What should I be on the lookout for?
• What here is useful or valuable to me?
• Who's really in control here?
• What here is not what it appears to be?

By reading the list of questions it should be apparent that Perception is a very player-driven process.  It's also worth mentioning that a Move in Dungeon World can only be triggered by the fiction as described by that player.  The player says what he's doing, and the GM may say "sound's like you're trying to Discern Realities; roll + Wis."  Or the player can specify that, but it won't work unless his description of the PCs actions also match up with the Move's trigger.  For Discern Realities, you have to "closely observe your target," and it's also called out that you "can't just stick your head in the doorway," but rather you have to closely examine the surroundings; pick things up, get up close and personal, etc.  A really helpful clarifying statement from the book:  "Discern Realities isn't just about noticing a detail, it's about figuring out the bigger picture."

That's a key difference with the classic Perception check - the GM isn't just going to tell the player "you find a trap," but rather they're answering a player's specific question.  The detail of "there are traps here" might still be included, but the specifics will vary depending on what question was asked.  Furthermore, if the player succeeds they will learn something even if the GM didn't plan for anything; by asking the question they are injecting a fact into the narrative based on the GMs response.  As a further carrot for the PCs, when acting on the answers they get a +1 forward (bonus to a future action).

This sounds cool and all (I haven't actually played Dungeon World yet), but rolling a 6 or less is still a null result, and the player doesn't get to ask any questions.  It's easy enough to incorporate a "fail forward" philosophy, which leads back to another blog post.

Query-Based Perception Hack

Yesterday there was a heavily Dungeon-World inspired article over at Mystic Theurge about Query-Based Perception.  The hack draws questions from several *World games and applies them to several different systems, including 13th Age.  In some ways this sub-system is more interesting than Dungeon World's.  It doesn't offer the "ask 3 questions" option, but it does let PCs ask a question regardless of whether they pass or fail, and either way they'll gain a +2 bonus to any actions while acting on the information.  On a failure, the information is wrong (or incomplete), but interesting results are sure to ensue when players risk acting on misinformation to get the +2 bonus.  It's a clever way to inject fail-forward into the system.

Clues and Mysteries

Thought Crime posted an interesting sub-system that might serve investigative style games quite well.  Ephemera are like temporary Backgrounds in 13th Age, and one such type is the "Clue."  Clues can be earned through a Perception or other investigation-related check much like the above system (or Discern Realities in Dungeon World), but they can also be gained from Icon rolls or as loot.  Though it's only orthogonally related to the Perception issue, I LOVE the idea of handing out Clues as loot, since they come with a built-in mechanism to entice players to play with the information (the ephemera bonus, which stacks with Backgrounds).  A later post outlines how a GM can structure an adventure around these mechanics with an example mystery.

Lorefinder

We're getting a little further from straight Perception here, but that's ok because Perception is only one facet of the bigger issue - how the GM doles out information to the players.  I've been eyeing a third-party supplement for Pathfinder for a while now; it incorporates the GUMSHOE system (which is the system that games such as Trail of Cthulu and Ashen Stars uses), and is called Lorefinder.  As I understand it, the way that GUMSHOE/Lorefinder works is that simply having an investigative skill is enough to give you some basic information in a situation that relates to that skill.  Your proficiency in an Investigative skill (which works differently from your standard skills like Climb, etc.) grants you a number of points that you can use per session rather than a modifier to a d20 roll.  You can use one or more of these points from the pool to gain additional information beyond the baseline.  The basic information will usually be just enough to get by without grinding the plot to a halt, while the "extra" information will obviously be more useful.  The GM will just give the PC the information, no roll required.  But the PC will have to decide when to spend those limited points, because some information will obviously be more useful than other.

What to Take Away from all of these Systems?

Clearly a case can be made for facilitating the flow of information between GM and PCs that minimizes both the tedium and roadblocks of straight Perception or investigative skill rolls.  Query-based Perception (including that used by the *World games) allows players to steer the details a bit by framing the information they obtain in the form of specific questions.  This works best when combined with a fail-forward philosophy, and a bonus when acting on the information further promotes player engagement and can lead to interesting consequences if the information is wrong or incomplete.  Expanding the idea of such bonuses (or "ephemera") to investigation in general, temporary Backgrounds (13th Age style) in the form of Clues provide a tangible reward above and beyond the information itself, as well as possibly being used as a limited resource ("spending" clues to move toward solving the mystery).  Lorefinder (and GUMSHOE in general) also does a great job of giving players a limited-use investigative resource, and is perhaps the most well-known system for handing out relevant information.

Have I used any of this in my own games?  Not directly, no (aside from general "fail-forward").  But I can see the promise, and I wish something like this were in place for the Pathfinder game I'm playing in.  Having spent much of the last few hours reading up on these various options, I'm not even sure if everything has really sunk in yet.  Using everything would be redundant and, more importantly, overly complex, and I'm not quite sure what would suit my needs best.  If my curiosity gets the best of me and I end up purchasing Lorefinder, I may have more to say on the subject.