Is misinformation fun?

[soggie]

I believe such an approach will vastly overvalue INT. Essentially you are getting half of the content by neglecting that stat. There is also no way for a player to know how high of an INT value is required for their character to obtain the level of information he expects them to without meta knowledge, etc.

Now, if the only stats available were different types of intelligence it might work. Something like book smarts, cold reading, and mechanical aptitude.

Intelligence mainly deals with analytical skills, which applies to most detective work and information analysis.

Here's a list of stats (in my design I make no distinction between attributes and skills):

Combat Branch

• Sidearm - mastery in pistols and revolvers
• Shotgun - mastery in... shotguns?
• Rifle - mastery in bolt action, semi auto and auto rifles
• Throwing - mastery in thrown globes of doom and thrown stuff
• Striking - mastery in unarmed striking arts
• Grappling - mastery in unarmed grappling arts
• Primitive, Heavy - mastery in heavy primitive weapons
• Primitive, Light - mastery in light primitive weapons

Utility Branch

• Charm - seduction and performance skills
• Persuasion - negotiations, haggling and debating skills
• Coercion - intimidation, blackmail, and intimidation skills
• Deception - impersonation, misdirection and deception skills
• Security - lockpicking, hacking and pickpocketing (offense & defense)
• Engineering - mechanical affinity, repair firearms and vehicles
• Stealth - sneaking around unseen, like ma shadow!
• Medicine - alchemy, surgery, etc

Attribute Branch

• Speed - general speed
• Reaction - reflexes
• Strength - physical strength
• Constitution - physical resistances
• Willpower - resistance against mental manipulations
• Perception - physical senses
• Intuition - cold reading, body language analysis
• Intelligence - comprehension and critical analysis skills

Book smarts = Intelligence
Cold reading = Intuition
Mechanical aptitude = Repair

Say for example, your character has a technical manual and a vault door to close to stop the wave of nipple biting rats from invading your vault of beautiful porn stars. In this case, Engineering is rolled to see if you comprehend the manual or not. If you fail that, you'll have to find some other way... like, succeeding in a strength check to shove the door close, or succeeding in a perception check to discover a seam in the caves outside which when shot will collapse the entrance, sealing you in the vault full of porn stars forever.

However, when the character attempts to compare several blueprints of the same building to see which one is the real one: perception check would allow the character to find inconsistencies by comparing the plans to his mental memory of the building; engineering check would allow the player to find architectural improbabilities in the fake blue prints; and finally, intelligence check would only show discrepancies between the plans. However, if the character had talked to the owners of the different plans beforehand, he could have used an intuition check to find out who's lying, or intelligence checks to prod the owners into revealing things they'd rather keep hidden.

Something like that.

 

[J1M]

The question really is what the point of the other skills is. You get bonus story for having INT and it's obviously possible to handle the combat with a character that has maxed their INT one way or another.

So why would anyone play without a high INT? For your game it sounds as important as action points in Fallout.

 

[soggie]

The question really is what the point of the other skills is. You get bonus story for having INT and it's obviously possible to handle the combat with a character that has maxed their INT one way or another.

So why would anyone play without a high INT? For your game it sounds as important as action points in Fallout.

Just like there are multiple ways to solve a problem, there are multiple ways to find information too. Interrogation can provide the same information as finding them out through computer records. Domain-specific stats can also yield the same level of information too.

So it's not that you need maxed INT to get the complete story. I figured it'll be a good way to encourage role play: you could play as a scholar, travelling the lands to uncover the true history. Or you can forget about history and use available information to your advantage, employing it as a leverage in conversations. The former needs high INT, while the latter needs high conversation skills.

 

[Castanova]

Please don't model "critical analysis" and other such related intelligence skills as a character attribute. It's incredibly frustrating to have figured things out on your own but you're unable to act on it due to your low INT character who can't figure out his ass from his elbow. This is one of those areas where a "pure" RPG approach is detrimental.

 

[JarlFrank]

Please don't model "critical analysis" and other such related intelligence skills as a character attribute. It's incredibly frustrating to have figured things out on your own but you're unable to act on it due to your low INT character who can't figure out his ass from his elbow. This is one of those areas where a "pure" RPG approach is detrimental.

In Fallout and Arcanum there were dialogue options that only appeared with high enough intelligence. So basically, if you're too dumb, your char won't figure that thing out and won't get the dialogue option.

If you really want that information you might get it in another way, though... (eavesdropping, finding a text that is easier to understand, physical evidence, seeing something happen in front of your eyes, etc etc etc).

I'm still sceptical about it (although I do think the feature is interesting) but this is the least of its problems. Low int characters not being able to do anything with the information you figured out by yourself is nothing new, is it, considering Fallout and Arcanum?

 

[laclongquan]

How well you can make the writings?

Fallout2 got a good thing going in this aspect:

VaultCity is a great place for meds and some weapons. That is the view of The Den, Modoc, Redding, and Gekko.

VaultCity is a horrible collection of holier-than-thou elitists: that is the view of Broken Hills, New Reno, and NCR. Also, New Reno and NCR share the view that VC is an expansionist empirelet.

It's not reflected in text but in the dialogs, the attitudes, the content of the quests.

 

[Murk]

How does increasing skills work? Do you get a set number of points per level up that you then spend on whatever attribute from whatever branch you want or is there a number of points you get per branch?

If the former, I can see the more useful branches soaking up points while the less useful branches (combat) not so much, unless the intention is to require the PC to have multiple combat skills for no reason other than making use of the branch.

Are attributes gained at level or are they chosen once and permanent throughout the game?

 

[soggie]

@laclongquan

What you're trying to say is that information should be revealed through inferences and not outright encyclopedic revelations. This is the direction we're heading to in fact: allowing the player himself to piece together information and giving them the capability to make up their own mind about various factions, towns, etc.

The classic example would be FO2's Redding, where you need to choose which faction (Vault city, NCR or New Reno) to side with. While the choices are quite polarized (VC are a bunch of anal wankers, New Reno are drug sucking power hungry mafias, which kind of leaves NCR as the obvious lesser of three evils), the concept behind it is intriguing because the game doesn't tell you who you should support (support VC and get +5 karma!) but rather allow you, as a player, to role play this aspect by thinking "what would my character do in this instance? Oh, he's a holier-than-thou paladin who imposes moral values upon the wasteland, thus making it reasonable that he'd choose VC over other factions. Alright, he will support VC then".

@Mikayel

Skills are bought through a point-buy system similar to FO2 and arcanum. Upon level ups you gain a number of stat points, which you can distribute over your stats.

Stats are divided into general stats and specialized stats. For example, the speech stat. In the speech stat you have persuasion, charm, deception and intimidation as specialized stats. So here you have two choices: dump the stat points into the speech stat to have all four speech stats improve at the same rate (thus generalizing) or dump the points into your specialized stats (e.g. pesuasion) to specialize in that stat.

In dice rolls, say for instance your character needs to intimidate an opponent. You have 5 ranks in speech, but zero ranks in intimidation. Thus the dice pool only takes into account your speech stat ranks. However, if you have 2 ranks in intimidation, you are given 7 dice in your pool rather than 5.

So, this provides the player a good way to determine how to build their characters. Wanna build a combat character but don't want to be completely socially inept? Specialize in rifles and then generalize in speech skills.

That's how our stat system works right now.

 

[JarlFrank]

In dice rolls, say for instance your character needs to intimidate an opponent. You have 5 ranks in speech, but zero ranks in intimidation. Thus the dice pool only takes into account your speech stat ranks. However, if you have 2 ranks in intimidation, you are given 7 dice in your pool rather than 5.

Eh, if that's the case, then the player could just put all his points into general speech. 1 point into speech means +1 on all speech rolls. 1 point into seduction means +1 on all seduction rolls. Either the specialized skills should count at least double, or the general skill should be more expensive to buy, otherwise this wouldn't work properly.

I got a slightly different idea how to solve this but I'd rather discuss that with you via MSN later.

 

[soggie]

In dice rolls, say for instance your character needs to intimidate an opponent. You have 5 ranks in speech, but zero ranks in intimidation. Thus the dice pool only takes into account your speech stat ranks. However, if you have 2 ranks in intimidation, you are given 7 dice in your pool rather than 5.

Eh, if that's the case, then the player could just put all his points into general speech. 1 point into speech means +1 on all speech rolls. 1 point into seduction means +1 on all seduction rolls. Either the specialized skills should count at least double, or the general skill should be more expensive to buy, otherwise this wouldn't work properly.

I got a slightly different idea how to solve this but I'd rather discuss that with you via MSN later.

Stats range from 1 rank to 5 ranks.

Dice rolls work like this:

To calculate a dice pool of say, trying to seduce a person:

Speech skill (general) + Seduction (specialized) + misc modifiers

So, let's say Person A has 5 ranks in speech but 0 ranks in seduction, he'll have a 5 dice pool.

If person B has 2 ranks in speech but 3 ranks in seduction, he'll get 5 dice pools too. So, what's the difference you ask?

This is the part where familiarity levels and mastery levels come in. Generalizing means you lose out specialized skills that can only be unlocked through specializing, and since you have a limited amount of stat points through the entire game, this creates a strategic scenario where you have to choose between being good at basic rolls (generalization) or gaining critically useful specialized skills.

A good example here would be the firearms branch. In the Sidearms stat (specialized stat), pushing the stat up to the 3rd rank will satisfy the pre-requirement for a mastery level. The first level of mastery level gives you an ability "Intuitive Snap Shot" (abilities differ depending on trainers), which is a snap shot performed with the accuracy of a called shot.

That's how the current generalization vs specialization balancing works.