Talking Characteristics

[rust]

In our current homebrew system we do use traits, but they are only a part

of the character background. They help the player to define his character,

and they help me as the GM to "reward" the player for staying "in character"

or to "punish" him for suddenly changing his character's personality in mid-

play because it seems convenient at the moment.

However, there are no die rolls during the game. The player decides what his

character will do or not, and the character suffers the consequences. A cha-

racter who is known for his truthfulness will find diplomacy easier than a well

known liar, but will suffer harsh setbacks and a loss of reputation once he got

caught with his first lie.

[dracopticon]

Yup. Very much so. Partly because the game had no real "defensive" abilities. [...]

Wow! These are some very good answers. And I'm going to answer them all (or atleast most of them) in turn. Because this discussion about traits are one of my favourite ones. But, right now I'm learning the basics in three Microsoft Office 2007 programs, Excel, Word and Outlook, all because I'm going to teach them all during the following wednesday, thursday and friday to a small group of people at a business company here in town. So, my time isn't all that free right now! Sorry for that because I'd like to talk about this right away.

But I'll return with some new energy soon (I hope)!

Bye for now, and thanks again,

Erik Brickman.

[Gnarsh]

In most RPGs it is very easy to roleplay a valiant or pious person. Likewise it is very easy to roleplay resisting torture. The player isn't having toothpicks shoved under his fingernails. The risks are all intangible. So players tend to roleplay what works.

True. I just happen to believe that the player should simply be allowed to roleplay how his character would react in such a situation. Obviously, his ability to actually resist torture should be based on more physical stats and skills. So say, Con to resist the pain. Perhaps Pow to avoid revealing key information. And there's always the possibility of having a "resist torture" or "endure pain" skill in your game if you so desire.

But by all means the player should be able to decide if his character stoically faces his fate or cries like a baby...

In Pendragon adventures could be based around characters having to past tests, not just of prowess, but of character. And that is what the traits did very well. Many stories simply won't work without something to handle traits.

Yeah. It did work in Pendragon. But IMO you basically have to make the game system revolve around traits to make it work. The choice in Pendragon was that in many situations you could pick which trait to use to try to resolve some situation you found yourself in. But this lead to a much more "free form" type of encounter resolution that I've never been super happy with.

Now, not quite as free form as "Toon" for example, but a bit too open for my tastes. Some may love those types of systems (actually I know that many many people do!), but my problem is that it usually devolved into one of two things:

1. Roleplaying munchkinism. Basically, if you were flowery enough or loud enough in your roleplaying attempts you could justify any roll possibility (always using your "best traits" to accomplish things). This often didn't improve actual roleplay, but lead to the kind of overbearing roleplaying style that I had quite enough of back in my days of GMing game tourneys (there's *always* one at every table if you know what I mean).

A subset of this is players who specifically pick which traits to focus on, not for roleplaying purposes, but so as to maximize their ability to pull this off.

2. Overly strict GMing. This was usually a reaction to number 1. The GM attempts to ensure that his players can't justify using only their best traits to resolve every encounter. So he deliberately crafts them to ensure that a wide assortment of different traits must be used to accomplish the tasks before the party and complete the adventure. Sounds good in practice (and works), but results in exactly the kind of "rolling your play" problem I mentioned earlier.

Dunno. There were just always several aspects of that type of system that I've always disliked. I understand that many people do like them, so that's obviously their choice. However, regardless of personal opinion using traits successfully does require that the game model be shifted significantly. They're just not going to work in a traditional skills based RPG IMO.

[drohem]

Well, in our RQ3 games we never enforced the traits. However, we would fill them out on the character sheet based upon the character's concept. This was mostly for the benefit of the GM in case he had to NPC a player's character during an adventure for whatever reason. Having it filled out helped the GM in determining the player's in-game actions.

[Atgxtg]

Well, in our RQ3 games we never enforced the traits. However, we would fill them out on the character sheet based upon the character's concept. This was mostly for the benefit of the GM in case he had to NPC a player's character during an adventure for whatever reason. Having it filled out helped the GM in determining the player's in-game actions.

THat's really how it works in Pendragon for the most part. Except how you act ends up adjusting your trait. The GM may force a roll for some sort of test of if the player is behaving out of character (like the guy who is greedy 99% of the time manages to walk past the pile of gold without batting an eye, but it is really mostly a tool for measuring the character's traits rather than enforcing them.

[dracopticon]

Just a quick answer: TrippyHippy wrote a few days ago:

- Morality is an interesting stat - although, it's something that's not easily definable, universal or easily measured as such.

That's absolutely on the spot. Morality is probably one of the hardest things to evaluate. My ideas along the line, as of late, are these:

First of all: I hate the old AD&D alignments, which are among the most blunt elements of showing PC values as there can be. I thought: I'm not having those "Evil" and "Good" values on Morality if I can help it. Instead, I'd like to replace them with "Egotistic" and "Generous", because these values describe a lot more of basic views on life and living than does Evil or Good because people and creatures everywhere tend to see the latter as totally different things from culture to culture.

Secondly, I do not intend to replace the more detailed Personal Values or Cultural Values with just Morality. No, Morality would just work as a fast test value when needed. I have an idea of numbering it between 1-20, with a value of 15 as "the normal" value of human or atleast ordered societies. The lower you go, the more depraved it is and inhuman in the worst meaning of the word. I'm looking for the notes right now on this right now, but can't find them, but a lot more on his may be said, hope to clarify more on this later.

Erik Brickman.

[rust]

As far as I can remember, the Harnmaster RPG has exactly the kind of mora-

lity stat you are planning to use.

[drohem]

Harnmaster has an attribute called Piety, which seems similiar off the top of my head.

[Celhan]

Harnmaster has an attribute called Piety, which seems similiar off the top of my head.

Harnmaster Morality is a better fit. It measures the degree to which principle motivates the character... low morality characters have more vague and subjective ideas of right and wrong (shading toward psychopathy at the low end) and high morality characters have more demanding universal codes. Frankly, speaking as someone who loves the Harnmaster ruleset, I find this characteristic poorly defined (codes of conduct vary in more than just strictness) and slighted in the rules (it doesn't affect anything except choice of god-- and a great deal of latitude is afforded even there).

Harnmaster Piety isn't a characteristic of the character's personality. It's a measure of the character's favor with his god, which gets accumulated through participation in cult rituals and spent in order to power Invocations (religious magic) and calls for divine intervention-- something like the way POW gets accumulated and spent on divine magic in RuneQuest. There really isn't a stat in Harnmaster that measures what the word piety connotes in plain English.

Personally, I really like the way Pendragon's personality traits work, and try to use them in all sorts of games, to an admittedly mixed reception. It's a concept that either clicks with a player or it doesn't; it really does with me.

[dracopticon]

Harnmaster Morality is a better fit. It measures the degree to which principle motivates the character... low morality characters have more vague and subjective ideas of right and wrong (shading toward psychopathy at the low end) and high morality characters have more demanding universal codes. Frankly, speaking as someone who loves the Harnmaster ruleset, I find this characteristic poorly defined (codes of conduct vary in more than just strictness) and slighted in the rules (it doesn't affect anything except choice of god-- and a great deal of latitude is afforded even there).

Very interesting. Could it be that I've been indirectly, subconsciensly influenced by Harnmaster...? Seriously, this could very well be the case. I've always been an admirer of Columbias excellent RPG (Only one thing really buggers me; the names! Areas can be named with names that sound quite arabic next to areas with clearly Western European middle ages names styles, without a change in culture). Other than that, they're doing a great job over at Columbia. Frankly I'd like to see a close workproject with those two: Chaosium and Columbia on a joint fantasy setting.

It'a also very interesting that they have the game mechanic of this Morality already. I'll have to look into this! I owned the first edition of Harnmaster back in the days, but found the system a tad to much (then). But I've heard and read about the newer versions and find them very good from hearsay.

Personally, I really like the way Pendragon's personality traits work, and try to use them in all sorts of games, to an admittedly mixed reception. It's a concept that either clicks with a player or it doesn't; it really does with me.

Me too. Nice to hear that more people than me that enjoys the Pendragon game system way of thinking. It'd be more than enjoyable if you could tell which games you've used the traits in?

Erik Brickman.

[Celhan]

I've always been an admirer of Columbias excellent RPG (Only one thing really buggers me; the names! Areas can be named with names that sound quite arabic next to areas with clearly Western European middle ages names styles, without a change in culture). Other than that, they're doing a great job over at Columbia. Frankly I'd like to see a close workproject with those two: Chaosium and Columbia on a joint fantasy setting.

Yeah, the names... Robin Crossby, creator of the Harnworld as well as Harnmaster, is a fantasy cartographer (of the first water, mind you-- I'm not sure I've ever seen someone else that good) and not a fantasy linguist, like M. A. R. Barker (of Tekumel fame).

You may want to look into kelestia.com if you haven't done so already. It's got more Robin Crossby Harn stuff.

It'a also very interesting that they have the game mechanic of this Morality already. I'll have to look into this! I owned the first edition of Harnmaster back in the days, but found the system a tad to much (then). But I've heard and read about the newer versions and find them very good from hearsay.

Harnmaster Gold is reputedly very good (the one Robin's selling directly through Kelestia). I'm scared off by the price tag and the fact that I already own two editions of the game. I've only seen the first and second editions, and between the two I prefer the first (it's the only edition where the magic rules aren't a separately-sold book-- grrr).

Me too. Nice to hear that more people than me that enjoys the Pendragon game system way of thinking. It'd be more than enjoyable if you could tell which games you've used the traits in?

Sure. I used them in three games run under the RuneQuest III rules, all set in the same homebrew fantasy setting. I've used them on an ad hoc basis in my Star Wars d20 game, and subsequently started to write up (but didn't use) a Pendragon-based game in the Star Wars setting. I've used a similar ad hoc arrangement in my ElfQuest game, come to think of it. I've really wanted to use them in the Middle Earth setting, and have a partial set of Pendragon-based rules for playing there, but I've shelved that for the moment because one of the two players I've got is a little put off by my Tolkien fan tendencies. I'm probably going to use them in my upcoming Victorian-fantasy game, if that ever gets off the ground.

[rust]

An interesting idea. Did you use the traits in the Star Wars game only for

Jedi Knight characters or for all kinds of characters, including Fringers and

Scoundrels ?

[Celhan]

An interesting idea. Did you use the traits in the Star Wars game only for

Jedi Knight characters or for all kinds of characters, including Fringers and

Scoundrels ?

It only had one PC, who was a Jedi Knight. However, I did include personality traits for NPCs (mostly non-Jedi), and they were occasionally very helpful as a guide to NPC behavior. For one thing, it gave some credible basis for considering someone "weak minded" (and susceptible to the Mind Trick) with respect to particular sorts of behavior, rather than just in general.

However, personality traits for NPCs aren't an incentive the way they are for PCs, and I admit the limitations of my testing. That said, personality traits don't enforce honorable behavior (or indeed any sort of behavior) and work pretty well for modeling less honorable characters, you just need to define how different groups interact with the traits.

Had I a scoundrel in the party, I might have created a list of traits that shady underworld types tend to admire (selfish, arbitrary, deceitful and valorous probably making the grade) and given a bonus to any scoundrel able to play that part with panache. Better still, I'd populate the Galactic underworld with organizations that value different things, and let the player choose what standards he wants to live up to.

My untested rules were essentially for an all-Jedi game, though they would've worked well equally well for an all-Sith game; they were largely about how the personality traits interacted with the Force.

[rust]

Thank you very much for this information !

The colonists in my Pharos IV-setting come from different planets with diffe-

rent cultures, and I was looking for a way to "mirror" these differences in the

character generation for quite some time.

Attributes and skills did not really work, but traits could well be a way to do

it, because they could directly influence the behaviour of the characters, not

only their abilities.

So, I will give it a try and design different sets of traits for the characters'

home cultures. I think I will not use these traits in the Pendragon way, with

dice rolls in game, but I will find some in-setting way to "reward" the players

for adhering to their cultures' typical traits instead.

Thank you again for a good idea.