Having played a few d100/BRP games, I don't like this form of advancement. Others have pointed out several problems, chief among which, IMO, players will find any excuse to use certain skills just so they can advance. And if the GM isn't aware of the problem, the whole game devolves into the same 5 skills being used all the time because that's what the players are good at.

I much prefer simple point buy. A character could have been studying, practicing, or learning from another character, and we don't need to role play those activities, so just assume it happened and move on with the actual game.

Just purchased this RPG, have to say it's giving me a lot of ideas for my OSR games.

Quote from: Lurkndog on April 27, 2024, 09:28:32 PMI see some problems with this approach.

1) Why does it matter whether you succeeded or not? You can learn just as much from failure. And as a starting character, you'll be failing a lot, and as GM there is good reason to reward failure.

2) Having to roll to see if your skills advance completely sucks. I say this from experience as a former Runequest player. It's hard enough to be a starting character without being unable to spend your xp. Especially when you then lose that xp.

3) By its nature, this will cause some players to advance faster than others, for no reason other than sheer dumb luck. That's not good. And if you say "over time it will all even out," you're wrong. The odds are exactly the same for each roll. The dice have no memory, and someone who pulls ahead because of a streak of lucky rolls is likely to stay ahead. And someone who falls behind is unlikely to catch up.

4) If you think it's bad when people get shafted once on advancement, wait until it happens twice right out of the gate. And it will happen twice to somebody. I wouldn't expect that player to come back.

5) How do you buy up new skills that you don't already have? What if nobody bought Cartography?

6) In Runequest, this encouraged what was called the "golf bag" approach, where players carried around a (figurative) golf bag full of different weapons, each of which they would use exactly once per session, to maximize their chances of getting a successful advancement check.

7) Some find the extra bookkeeping during play to be distracting. And the time spent rolling skill advancement checks comes out of game time.

Basically, this is point buy with extra steps. And those extra steps are problematic.

Well I disagree with that final statement, nor did you offer an alternative.

But to put it simply skills also progress on level up, or have a chance to, as I'm taking the RPGpundit approach of random level benefits, sometimes its extra HP, a boost to an attribute or 1d6+1 to a skill of choice. still random but it even's out. and you tally multiple skills, all skills you had success with or crit failed with have a chance of improving after the session, so it's very unlikely you get zero improvement.

And as well my system is pretty lethal in that OSR style tradition, the expectation is character may not live very long, so any one character plowing ahead of the others is not a very big issue.

I agree with some of the objections, but they seem easy to address: you skill spend XP as you want, but you can only spend them if you successfully roll over a skill you used.

If you use multiple skills, you get to choose which you want to try to advance first. If you fail in all your rolls, you can start again etc.

I think the only way to make the idea that 'everyone is god and they just don't know it, knowing it gives you powers' salvageable for a story or game is to make it so that bad people can realize this. Especially bad delusional people. Imagine if Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot had the powers of a Mage.

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on April 27, 2024, 10:46:47 PM

Quote from: SHARK on April 24, 2024, 01:28:10 AMI hope that I have encouraged you, brother!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I find your response and exhortation heartening, SHARK, and thank you for it.

Without giving us the right to defend ourselves and our loved ones God becomes a moral monster, and I'm happy to meet someone who sees a Christian way to avoid that horrible conclusion.

What Bible version do you use? Whom do you consult for Scriptural advice?

Neoplatonist1

Greetings!

You are very welcome, brother! I am always glad to help! As for Scriptural advice and instruction, I would absolutely recommend Pastor John MacArthur, and Pastor J. Vernon Mcgee. I have included YouTube videos of both men below. I have found that the doctrinal instruction and wisdom provided by Mcgee and MacArthur through the years have been rock solid in providing a powerful foundation that stands the test of time, and crushes all of the world's arguments, temptations, and fickle, spiritual fads so commonly passed about by one flavour of charlatan after another. Listen to these Godly men's teachings, read their books, and study God's Word. 
As for the Bible, I strongly prefer the King James Bible. The Common Man's King James Bible is my favourite. (By Hoffman)
For additional study, you can't go wrong with the MacArthur Study Bible. (NKJV).

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK


Pastor John MacArthur

Pastor J. Vernon Mcgee

Quote from: yosemitemike on Today at 04:46:38 AMThis is similar to how Call of Cthulhu does it.  It works but there are some problems.

It encourages players to roll as many checks for as many skills as possible hoping to get a success.  Characters will do things just to get rolls so they can maybe advance. 

Certain skills will go up much faster than others.  It will be whatever skills the GM calls for the most rolls with.  In CoC this is usually spot hidden, listen and library use.  Skills that rarely come into play will rarely if ever advance.   

Exactly. And as much as we want to claim "rulings over rules" and just explain the Players and tell them to avoid metagame to stack successes, its just going to happen no matter what.

The players will eventually wise up and try to come up with ways to justify rolling for stuff. Its something that makes sense in theory but in practice you get Skyrim characters letting themselves be hit by crabs by the river to raise their Heavy Armor skill.

One way to go about it is that advancement requires GM approval, but by that point you can just cut the middleman and then have your players get GM approval to just buy skill ups with XP.

As Lurkndog said, this is just point buy with extra steps and opens up the door for a lot of metagaming/powergaming for very little added value.

Quote from: jeff37923 on Today at 06:37:00 PMIndeed!

Now, if you REALLY want to go down a rabbit hole, grab a copy of CT Adventure 4 Leviathan. I believe that most of the prototype ideas which became the WH40K setting were first described in that adventure. It was written by GW, after all....

I'll give it a look!

Quote from: BadApple on Today at 06:40:30 PMSo Classic Traveller, Mega Traveller, Traveller New Era, Mongoose Traveller 1e and 2e, and Cepheus Engine are all very compatible but not 100%.  Aside from having different skills lists, there area stats balance differences between editions.  Over all, you should be able to use material between editions without conversion most of the time.

Thank you very much!

Youtube keeps recommending NPC and normie trrpg content to me, so I felt like making a thread to discuss them. Trust me, these people can get real nasty towards each other.


The Character Sheet at Comicbook.com is relatively drama-free but tends to skim over a lot of information.

So Classic Traveller, Mega Traveller, Traveller New Era, Mongoose Traveller 1e and 2e, and Cepheus Engine are all very compatible but not 100%.  Aside from having different skills lists, there area stats balance differences between editions.  Over all, you should be able to use material between editions without conversion most of the time.