<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1106" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=lev_lafayette@yahoo.com.au href="mailto:lev_lafayette@yahoo.com.au">Lev
Lafayette</A> </DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><STRONG></STRONG>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><BR>LL: Well, human versus chimp used to be a
common side-show<BR>feature.. You know, 45kg chimp, 90 kg human, chimp<BR>picks
up human throws him out of the ring...</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">KS: Really? Freaky. "Get your paws off me you
dirty ape!" I'm with Charlton Heston on this one: "You apes can have my gun when
you pry it out of my cold, dead hands!" Or something like that.<BR><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">LL: Relative to what however? If it's just
relative to the<BR>"campaign average", I think there is a sim
problem,<BR>especially if you start throwing in uplifted gorillas<BR>and aliens
into the mix. <BR><BR>If the average human is the norm, but there's a
bunch<BR>of gorrillas in the mix as well, then the scale is<BR>going to go
wonky.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">KS: You think? Is it that common to have, in the
same campaign, two PCs who aren't in the same league? If Superman is a PC, will
Lois Lane be a PC, too? Or is it more likely that one of them will be an NPC?
Every game I can think of, the PCs are in the same league.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"> By "the same league" I mean,
"the weakest member of group A will be weaker than the strongest member of group
B". So, in Earthdawn or Shadowrun, trolls are on average heaps stronger than
humans. But the weakest troll is weaker than the strongest human. Especially if
you add in a random factor, so that either the troll or the human's performance
in an individual task can be much better or worse than their attribute or skill
level... </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"> If they're in the same league,
then you don't need one scale for humans, and another for uplifted gorillas. The
strongest human can wrestle the weakest gorilla, yeah? Okay, cool. So you just
say, "Humans have a Strength of 1 to 10, average 5; gorillas have a Strength of
8 to 14, average 10" or something similar. </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"> I can't think of any games
where PCs are in different leagues on a regular basis. Sure, with
"universal" rulesets you can twink it out. In GURPS you could have one
character with Strength 1 and IQ 30 (normal range is 5 to 15, with 10 being
"average", that is, cost zero points), and another with Strength 30 and
IQ 5, they'd both be about the same point totals, and out of one another's
leagues in Strength and IQ. But this just shows what I've said, no set of
rules are truly universal, and you can never remove the need for the GM to say,
"er, no, that would be stupid. I suggest this change to your character..."
<BR></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">LL: people don't want the know what the nth
degree<BR>is. But they also like having a rule of thumb they can<BR>work
with.<BR></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">KS: Sure. The only question is how broad the brush
you'll paint the character with. WoD characters get along happily with six
levels of ability, or eleven if you count the attribute+skill rolls. </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"> GURPS, despite all the numbers
in it, in effect has about five levels of ability which come up regularly. But
that's okay, since there are only four possible results: crit failure, failure,
success, and crit success.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">That brings up another question. Many systems have
X range of _possible trait values_, and Y range of _possible performances_. X is
almost always greater than Y, never less. For example, in RQ2 you have a range
of possible values for a skill of 100, pretty much, since it's percentile, but
you only have four possible performances: crit failure, failure, success, and
crit success. WoD has the same thing, though calling crit failures "botches".
Come to think of it, that four-level thing is pretty much universal in games...
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"> My question is, why have a
wider range of possible ability levels than you have of possible ability
performances? What for? Apart from the sheer joy of number-crunching and
minimaxing, it seems to me the only reason can be so that you can compare two
things in the same ability band. For example, there's a system floating around
where your character chooses a skill, and they're just Novice, Experienced, and
Master at it. But what about when two Experienced guys duke it out? Who wins?
Well, roll dice, who gets higher, wins. So it's 50/50. Most players find that
unsatisfying. The guy with the MSc (Chemical Engineering) know if he's better or
worse than his buddy from the same course, even though they're both Experienced.
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"> More than a certain level of
granularity is not practically useful. A person with 67% Fencing probably can't
tell they're any better than someone with 64% Fencing. The only reason to have
that level of detail - 100 possible levels - is (apart from the specific case of
percentiles being easy for the average math-minded gamer to grasp) that the GM
can give out small rewards without twinking out the game. If all you have is
Novice, Master and Experienced, and you give out a level each game session,
pretty soon the characters will be Masters of everything. But if it's a scale of
1-100, it'll take quite a while for them to get to 100% in everything...</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">hmmm, rambling now:)</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">Cheers,<BR>Kyle<BR>Better Mousetrap Games<BR>home
of d4-d4 and other stuff<BR><A
href="http://www.rpgnow.com/default.php?manufacturers_id=339">http://www.rpgnow.com/default.php?manufacturers_id=339</A></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>