Darkholme

Lol. I guess I underestimates how much you old guys like videogames. (teasintg) Thats actually pretty cool. I dont like the idea of only gaming once a month, but I get that when you get older you usually have alot less time for fun. And shield bash is the best perk; so much fun. @Rosen: So the rulesystem is in the Italian Wheel of Fate setting book, or just somewhere on the same site?

In Legend, Easy and Difficult are +/- to your skill on the roll (as opposed to a multiplier). But thats kindof irrelevant to my point. I'd like to know what sort of climbing action qualifies as easy, standard, and difficult, etc. Same for the other skills.

What language is it in? I speak french, and I'm iffy on russian. I could figure it out, especially with google at my side. If its not in english, I can still figure it out. As for the Age thing: You can consider me one of very few people in their 20's on this board then. 10 years ago I was still in highschool.

You know, if you sit down and play it yourself, you can drive him crazy instead, telling him about what YOU did in skyrim. Either that or it ends in you guys sitting and having a few drinks comparing all the cool stuff you did, and then going to see if you can do even cooler stuff for next time. Teenage sons drink with their dads right? Or was my dad atypical that way when I was a teenager? It IS a game where you can play as a Viking and run around killing dragons, and shield bashing them in the face. I dont think I've really gotten into a new videogame since like 2001 (Neverwinter Nights 1, and its expansions), and I keep wishing I wasnt so busy and that I had time to play skyrim again. So I'm just saying, you might have fun. [Edit: Rosen Posted, Here is response] Its alot like the old Elder Scrolls games in terms of how it would translate to RQ, but with the addition of *Shouts* and Perks. > Shouts are heavy duty "Words of Power" that do something very specific and very powerful in comparison to normal magic (and come in three levels) (And only have a cooldown as a limiting factor), but are supposed to be very hard for anyone other than dragons to learn. > Perks are like the Perks in Fallout, if you've played that. Essentially, as you level up, you get Perk Points, which can be spent on any Perks you meet the prerequisites for. The Points can be used later. They're kindof like feat-trees attached to a single skill, which let you do new things or change how you used to do old things. So for archery, for example, you can slow down game time while aiming. In a tabletop that would be making the process of aiming have a better payoff. Or, there's one in Stealth, which makes it so you don't set off traps while sneaking, due to stepping really lightly. Things like that. The number of Perks you have (or could spend) would be directly proportionate to the amount of experience you have. I dont imagine it would be terribly difficult to model, as you mentioned; you'd need to do the spells in an existing system, and do the Shouts/Perks as new subsystems. My question was more asking people if they had tried doing it, and anything interesting things they came up with in the process. But its dawning on me now that there's a decent chance most of the people on these boards are likely over 30 (a bit older than the rpg.net & ENWorld & candlekeep demographics), and are therefore less likely to have sat down and played skyrim for any real length of time, let alone ran a tabletop campaign modeled after it. Suffice to say, the videogame is fun, and the setting is very interesting.

Yeah. I'd like to have hard examples of what qualifies as easy, average, difficult, etc in the context of each skill, and move a step away from "Let the GM decide" in an effort of standardizing things. If the GM wants to deviate from it on purpose, or make an alternate set of difficulties for a different genre or whatever, then great. Once I've collected some data, and come up with a set of standard difficulties, I'll post them up here. My information will likely be drawn from as much real-world data as possible. If people want to modify it or just not use it, great. I see it as the major thing the d100 systems lack, that (in my opinion) is needed for a good game. Nothing bothers me more than shifting target numbers, and the same task having a different difficulty for different players, or on different days. I guess I mostly wanted to ask if it had been done before.

Just had a thought while I should be studying. It occurs to me that RuneQuest would (mostly) make a good ruleset to model a Skyrim campaign. (I imagine you may need to make some changes to the magic system, add in shouts, and maybe perks.) Has anyone done anything with RQ & Skyrim?

Thats an interesting chart for skill levels, but it doesnt necessarily help mark individual tasks for each skill at each difficulty all that much, does it? The other side of the issue isnt filled in so much.

Hmm. I suppose that makes sense Rust. In that case, having a single collection which you can modify if your campaign needs deem it necessary still seems like a useful task. I guess it would go from being a "universal difficulty chart" to a "generic difficulty chart". You could easily do a "if you are doing this sort of campaign, these changes are suggested."

I see. Well, when you finish your "Trait" system, I'd love to see it. I know you can't make it completely objective, but the less subjective the difficulty rulings are, the better. @Rust: I think you have a good method of determining difficulties in general, though I disagree with having to redo it for every campaign. I'd rather look at a couple cultures, and look at the olympic experts, and get a "maximum" and work down from there, and then generalize it across many campaigns. I'm perfectly okay with olympic speeds; but they would be when your skill is 80-100.

@Zit: I suppose. But then, I may want the guideline of having an example of each difficulty for each skill, but I have no problems with "track is track" and just allow it to work without penalties for anyone based on the environment they were raised in (unless the campaign is all about hunters, then I may need the granularity). I dont mind improvising, but I'd like to have a measuring stick to compare against to make sure my improv is consistent.

Ah. In essence, they would be different track skills, that wouldnt have much overlap. So how would you handle a game that included both? Make them separate skills? Make them like D&D's "Craft" skill, and have you specify an environment type, and make environment types you haven't got have a penalty (or different difficulties, or what have you)? You could "assume" the terrain by their culture, and go with that, but what if your inuit has been living in venice for a while and wants to learn to track humans like the PI does?

Both of the characters can get their skill above 100, though, which means either one has the same *potential* to get any level of skill, its just easier for one of them than the other to get there. You'd certainly have different upper limits for starting characters based on their racial package though. And you can always get a critical. I'm very new to this system; but I have lots of Experience with D&D 2 & 3, and Both versions of World of Darkness, and some experience with Unisystem, so I can wrap my head around RPG Mechanics. I guess what I'm confused about is "Am I missing something crucial that's in the way of setting standardized difficulty numbers according to tasks?" "What complications would arise from setting standardized difficulties? What complications do you get by *NOT* Having standardized difficulties?", and since you seem to be saying that the difficulties should not be the same for characters with different fluff backgrounds, I'd like to better understand why you say that.

Aren't both of those things the way they are because of differences in skill? The Mongolian has more experience and better training with a bow, and the hunter has experience tracking. the mongolian "Culture Package" could include a bonus to firing a bow that would basically equate to that difficult task being an average task +20 to his skill governing archery, and the hunter a +60 to track the caribou. I'm a little confused as to why that wouldn't work, it sounds easy to define. So shooting a man from 100 meters would have a -20 modifier associated with it(Task Modifiers via Legenr), and tracking a caribou from 2-day old tracks would also have a -20 associated with it (theyd be the same difficulty), but the hunter has such an advance to hunting that he can effectively cancel out the -20 and still get to add 40 (making it an easy task for him) and the mongolian would be good enough to cancel out the penalties of that shot making it an average task for him. Maybe I'm missing a piece of the picture. That seems like it should work, to me anyways. If using multipliers, it might be a little harder to define, but I imagine using the bonuses from the example above for culture/profession might still work pretty well.

Hmm. But that means it just doesnt work to take your 17th century pirate and have them from a country neighboring your 4th century picts, with 11th century vikings next to them on the other side. (This is the sort of thing I think I'd like to do.) Youd be using different difficulty scales for each skill for each culture. Can you give me some examples of the setting-specific stuff you've come up with?

Wouldnt that difference in difficulty be easy to approach in terms of the different professions and races/cultures that the people in those two games would have? Having a standardized table to compare against would be a good way to keep my GMing consistent (something I consider pretty important), as inconsistent application of difficulties is very subjective or subject to favoritism, or can easily be interpreted as such by players. (I've been on the receiving end of that in World of Darkness, and I didn't enjoy it). I can agree in some really unusual settings, different charts may be needed (like for a superheroes game, or if you want to model thundercats where Jumping 30 feet into the air is something athletic people can do, and falling does negligible damage); but for a "Human Powered" game, I think standardized charts would be a great help. Nothing currently exists like that though, eh? Looks like I've got a chart to make before I run the game.

As Zit Pointed out, static modifiers to roll-under are equivalent to static modifiers to roll-over in terms of chance of success. Its really just a matter of which of the ways you choose to represent it. I suppose roll-over would complicate criticals and specials and fumbles, which would have to be adjusted. I dont think I like the multipliers, but I think the modifiers in Legend would work for me. I could really use a "difficulty chart" though. Something with a decent list of tasks covering each difficulty modifier (in either multipliers or modifiers) would help alot. Like, one example per skill per difficulty. Then when a situation comes up its easy to be consistent. Just choose the one that matches in difficulty. Is there anything like that available?

I'll have to go through these then. Thanks for the list. Its unfortunate that they're so spread out though. Oh well. I appreciate it anyways.

I guess I'm a little sketchy on the "multiplier" mechanic, in a "skeptical towards liking it" sort of way. Multiplying your skill, to me, isn't the same thing as setting a difficulty, because it affects people of different levels of skill quite differently. Instead, it's determining how much *any* person stands a chance of success, and more skilled people are affected by a greater % than lesser skilled people. The difficulty of the task varies depending on who is attempting it. And that to me seems, well, illogical. Not only does my skill affect how easily I can accomplish it, it also makes the task itself vary in difficulty. Some sort of translation may work, maybe, but skill multipliers & dividers just seem like the wrong way to approach task difficulty to me. If that mountain cliff isn't changing itself depending on who approaches it, then multipliers dont make alot of sense to me as the mechanism to say how hard it is; they dont affect everyone evenly. Now if climbing the mountain cliff is deemed a -20% modifier, then that mountain is straight up 20% more difficult than the 0 modifier task, regardless of who is trying to climb it.

Hmm. In this variant and example you're talking about, which would be better in that example: Rolling a 25, or rolling a 30?

I think I like this idea. That seems like a decent way to represent "This Rope is X Hard to climb" As opposed to "How good are you at climbing?" That seems like it would be equivalent to actually changing the mechanic to a roll over + stuff, but without breaking the other systems or complicating things for the PCs.

Ah. So where I have rq vikings, I probably dont also want this. good to know. Good book though.

Intriguing! How does this compare with mrq2 vikings or mythic iceland?

Thanks! Glad to be here! I've been looking into BRP just the past couple days. So far I'm liking it. I grabbed a copy of RuneQuest Vikings, and Chaosium's Elric! too. All look to be quite awesome. I'm kindof excited to try out this system to play in it or run it. Ideally, I want to find someone else to run it for me. lol. Noted. If I have a hard time with Chases I will convert something from one of the other 6 or 7 systems on my shelf. Grabbed! There seem to be some more systems in there than in the Legend core book. Perhaps I'll get some good use out of them. Hmm. Alright. I'll see if I can hunt down Warhamster. If not, I hear Paizo's attempt at mass-combat is quite good. Perhaps I'll convert that. And I have the Mass Combat rules for Unisystem and D&D 3.5 on my shelf as well. I guess I can come up with something for that one if I have to. Would have been nice to have something I could just grab and use, conveniently located. Noted. I'll be getting copies of those when I get to the part of planning where I need rules for Organizations or Empires. Thanks. That Basic Gamemaster pdf looks good. You say no Cannons in that one though? What's BGB?

Hmm. Perhaps the Legend approach of % modifiers might serve my purposes well enough. If I were to switch it to Roll Over-TN, I could use the chance of success to determine the degree of success rolled, but I'd have to do math on the fly for that. Lets say I dont go roll-over, and just want something functionally equivalent to fixed target numbers. Is the list of modifiers from Legend a good way to approach that? Perhaps take examples of actual tasks (one from each skill or roll type would be the thorough approach) and assign them to the % Modifiers? I dont mind having a table of modifiers sitting in front of me stuck to my GM Screen. I don't think the (Skill * x) approach is a good way of modeling difficulty. IMO that models the degree to which skill is more relevant than chance, as opposed to the difficulty of a task. I'm curious about that one variant rule that was mentioned though, the price is right model (higher is better unless you go over), where is that spelled out? I can see it speeding up play.

While the d100+numbers part of HARP/Rolemaster is something I like, the rest of the system is slow and clunky, and unsupported. Additionally, I dont want to have all-important classes define your character like you have in rolemaster. the d100+numbers part of rolemaster - and perhaps the idea of having some sort of crit table (we'll see about that one) are the only real parts of rolemaster I'm interested in. Theoretically I could leave the rolling mechanic the same, and instead of using multipliers for difficulty I could go with the +-5% method (I think it would yield the same end results as the roll over variant described above), but the numbers might be slower to compare/understand. When you say "go against the grain of the system" how exactly do you mean? You mean just because its a very noticeable change, or do you mean that it will cause lots of mechanical problems/complications?