Nightshade

If its common enough, I couldn't care less if its their behavior. I just want to fix the problem, and I don't have any faith in fixing human nature. Protecting other people from their decisions is more important to me than trying to fix the people, which I have little evidence will happen. I'm perfectly comfortable saying that a rule that creates enough bad results is a bad rule; acknowledging human nature is something I think a rule set should do if its doing its job correctly. Or, put another way, I'm not interested in fixing people; I'm interested in setting up the game so that it doesn't cause problems, and I think that the open ended tick system does that often enough to justify changing it. If yours is otherwise, that's your gig, but I'm a mechanic, not a theologian.

Nope. Most were objections that the trait system is a coarse tool for the job, and overly mechanistic. In other words, most of them were on the part of people who thought it actually got in the way of roleplaying, rather than helping it. Others, as I said, basically added up to not feeling it should be the GM telling people how is proper to play their characters; that that's the one thing a player controls in the game, and that having the GM get into it is tantamount to turning the players into just actors following the GM's script to one degree or another.

I've seen many, many criques of Pendragon's traits system on just that grounds over the years.

If you're going to do that you might as well just remove it as an option rather than being passive-aggressive about it. And in my experience, when there's time to train and money to do it, everyone does it, not just one character; they'll just do it in different areas.

That's your choice, but it still means your concern about excess channelling isn't a consequence of limiting rolls, but limiting them excessively. Its not an objection to it as a system but an objection to a degenerate case.

This basically says that GURPS, the Hero System, JAGS and every other point based, skill centered game is a class based game. Are you really sure you want to go there, Atgxtg? Because I think that's ludicrous on the face of it. Nothing forces you to shove all your points into one narrow focus in those games, and nothing does so with development rolls. It may be attractive to do so, but a BRP game with any appreciable training time is attractive in exactly the same way. And yet, if you're concerned about a GM gaming process to provide rewards and penalties, it allows him to do that with the process just as easily.

If I'd seen multiple players, in different groups, do the same thing over the years, damn right I would. I'd conclude the game system was passively encouraging a behavior bad for the game as a whole (which I consider most self-destructive behavior to be, because it inevitably splashes on other people). Groups are dependent on each other. If one character goes down from this behavior, he's not available when he's needed. In addition, he's potentially not the only one who pays for it up front; if someone has decided to try and sneak into a guard post in the middle of the night that everyone else has decided to bypass just to try out his stealth and perception skills, when the post is alerted, they're not going to not look around to see what else might be about. Characters don't exist in perfect, encapsulated worlds distinct from one another. In addition, when someone gets lucky and this works out for them, the behavior tends to be contagious, and since people, as you note yourself, have rotten senses of probability in most case, when it then does blow up on them, they're not going to automatically associate the problem with the behavior, but in many cases just with "bad luck". If I kept seeing people do it over the years inappropriately, and found a way to modify it a way to discourage that while doing no appreciable harm to anyone else, you bet I would. It would help if you would engage with what I'm actually discussing rather than focusing overly on some idea I'm protecting individual players from bad decisions, rather than trying to address what seems from observation more than an isolated behavior, and one that often hurts more than just the person indulging in it.

Its hard to say how its working; as it turns out, only one character in the group uses a shield (the setting is sort of borderline post-renaissance in technology, so a lot of people use longarms and among melee skills its worked out that three of us use two-handed weapons) but what we do is simple: add 5% per each shield size. This means a typical medium shield adds 15% as a modifier, which at least makes it have some point when used against melee weapons as compared to an off-hand weapon.

Well, it is a method I've planned to use if I ever get around to the RQ:AIG/RQ3 hybrid house system I occasionally bash on, so its not entirely theoretical for me. (On the other hand I didn't find the need to introduce that into training, which from the sound of it MRQ does). Well, as you say, Mongoose bought a lot of that up front; as one of the playtesters, they didn't exactly make positive brownie points in how they handled that either. But all reports I've heard is that MRQ2 is a pretty good game, even if not to everyone's taste, and as you say, even a generally problematic system can have good features in it.

Well, that's entirely possible; during the playtest of the original MRQ, what was going through the designers minds was fairly opaque to us "down on the ground". I'm more commenting about one possible reason and what I consider its virtues. In a way I'm talking more about a theoretical model than whatever MRQ actually ended up with. Heh. It is to be noted that I'm currently playing in a BRP game using pretty much the traditional open-ended method. I don't consider it hideously broken, but then, as I noted, I'm a grognard too. I just think people are in too big a hurry to blow off other methods, and I'm reasonably sure some of that is simply out of habit.

This is only the case if you set the number of rolls too low. Set it at, say, six to eight per check cycle, and normal users will almost never even notice it, and it won't noticably channelize people.

Oh, and this? This is silly. Limiting the number of rolls does not make the game a classed game, and BRP has always made development effectively a reward from the GM, since the GM always got to decide if the roll was relevant. As such he always could say "Not a meaningful roll". This was particularly easy to do with all kinds of non-combat skills.

Frankly, "blame" is to me, completely irrelevant. If its common enough, it creates a problem and I see a virtue in fixing it. Given there's perfectly good ways to fix it without harming anything else (you just set the checks such that they'll cover the normal range of expected skill usage) there's no argument I see to counter that other than its change and someone doesn't like it. You seem to be focused on the idea I'm talking about what problems it causes for individual players, but they aren't the only ones I see this as hurting; I see it as harming the game as a whole when it occurs.

It probably isn't in the ordinary cases; if it was, this wouldn't be a big topic of discussion here, as most people would be using some method of addressing it. But as it is, most BRP longimers have learned some passive methods of discouraging it, and as such this rule seems intrusive. But new users aren't BRP longtimers. They may not even be particularly experienced GMs in general, and may have various local issues to deal with where having to wrestle with this, even in a small way, may be annoying. Given this gives them one less thing to have to worry about, I'm just failing to see why some people are hostile to it.

I don't believe for a moment you can separate those off the way you want to here, since I've seen this problem on a lot of otherwise good players over the years, and heard considerably more. It didn't exactly used to be a big mystery that RQ games suffered from this. That doesn't suggest to me that its an issue limited to a small number of poor players, but a not uncommon property of players as a group that the open ended number of possible rolls brings out. Again, you seem to think they'd complain about it. They wouldn't. That doesn't mean it was good for the game. Nor do I buy "better players" is the answer, as I saw way too many people over the years exhibit tendencies in this direction. I have to conclude its a disease quite capable of coming up in an average player group. If it happens with enough players enough times, I'm afraid I can't agree. Dealing with the reality of the psychology of gamers as a group is one of the things I do, in fact, expect a rule set to address. The fact the problems it can create aren't universal is, honestly, not a good enough answer in some cases; at least not good enough for me to be tolerant of blowing off rules changes that do indeed address such problems. Especially since the objections to the change in this particular case seems little more than pure grognardism, since the number of permitted rolls can easily be set so that its not a problem for normal advancement. Or put bluntly, some people have no need for this? That's not a good enough reason if enough people do, especially since it can serve them and not harm you.

Well, the problem with that is that you just end up getting people who argue it wasn't for "goofy reasons". Breeding that sort of argument is a problem in and of itself. And you could make an argument that as relatively weak as they were, almost any battle magic attack spell was "goofy" to use if you were a capable combatant. But yes, power gain rolls could be particularly egregious here.

That could well be. I can't imagine anyone who's comfortable with old style Traveler with its training-only advancement (and that fairly limited) running to this problem.

The problem is that check-hunting isn't limited to weapon skills, though the weapon-caddy became sort of a running joke back in the RQ2 days because that was the one that tended to be most blatant. But over the years I've seen people go out of their way to get checks in social skills, non-combat physical skills, and in versions of the rules where this gave you a roll, knowledge skills. As I said, its just a complex of some kind. It really doesn't have a rational basis most of the time.

The only way you should lose on that deal is in terms of training. Otherwise, its strickly as good or better to get ticks in two weapons rather than one, no matter how frequently you actually permit the advancement rolls. It can make a limited amount of sense to pursue a few weapons that have separate functions--a bow, a longspear and a shortsword all serve better in different situations for example. Its when you see the guy who carries the battleaxe, the longsword, the shortspear and the mace you know its probably become a compulsion rather than making any sense. In some game systems the properties of these are different enough and have enough specialized advantages that it can make some sense, but BRP doesn't go that route.

By the by, just to elaborate on something since I didn't make it clear, outside of RQ cult needs, most of the time "roll hunting" is not a rational behavior; you want a high skill in BRP in general because you're going to need to use it; but if you use it regularly, there's no need to go out of your way to get rolls. The desire to get them seems mostly separate from any actual power-gaming mentality (which pursues ways to get maximum percentage in the skills you already are rolling all the time), but its none the less common for all of that.

I suspect you've got people who are far, far more willing to ignore "PC glow" than is even vaguely typical in this hobby. People who take unnecessary risks are all over the hobby, and even gritty systems don't make that go away.

If you don't see the way an ongoing tendency in this direction can disrupt a campaign, I'm not sure what to say to you. Killing the character doesn't really help unless every new character starts at the bottom (and that creates its own sets of problems in my experience). As I said, I've seen people who did this no matter the consequences. Over the years in RQ I saw quite a lot of them to one degree or another. The fact it had risks didn't seem much of a deterant in a game where no matter how careful you were, a 01 from a composite bow could make all your effort in vane, and given it tends to be irrational behavior in the first place, expecting potential bad consequences to fix it isn't understanding the problem.

That's certainly an alternate way to deal with it; its just inverting the process which may suit some people better than limiting the number of ticks possible, which is really what the MRQ method does.

Why would you get hit a lot more often? Barring missile weapon fire, its not like there's any particular likelyhood you'll fail a weapon parry over a shield parry, by the book.

The problem with this is that a certain percentage of BRP system players develop what I can only call a compulsion about getting rolls. In fact, I think most do to a limited extent, but some just can't keep it down to sanity. Now what you talk about here deals with the issue of meaningless rolls, but it can't deal with the other half of the problem: rolls that are meaningful but didn't need to happen. Lets say you have two ways of dealing with a problem, the more straightforward, and safer way, and the more risky way that doesn't really have much else to recommend it--but it does provide more skill rolls. Some people will take the latter just for that reason. There's two problems with this: 1. Everyone else may not be onboard this approach, but that doesn't mean they don't get dragged along one way or another. 2. Even if everyone is onboard, it turns up the hazard level in a way that may not be attractive or good for the overall health of the game. Now you may say "Well, I have ways of addressing that if it happens." Of course you do. Like most people on this board, you're probably a longtime BRP grognard. This means one way or another, you've gotten peace with any peculiarities of the system. But not everyone is a longtimer. And new people aren't necessarily going to be similarly equipped, or, in some cases, feel like they want to deal with the problem. In the past, at least some of these have probably tossed in the towel and moved on to other systems. So providing people a tool to keep this down to a dull roar does serve a purpose, even if its not one many people on this board feel like they need.