perfidy

Seeing as Perfidy is letting its inner (or not so inner) geek hang out, lets just wallow in it, shall we?

No one, to my knowledge, has come up with a really good role-playing game system. The problem seems to center on the difficulty of modeling skills and the learning process. Other problems (such as combat, physics, various magical or super-technological systems) have been solved with varying degrees of success, usually with an attempt to balance ease of use with verisimilitude. The fact that these systems are used constantly in the game system puts a premium on the ease of use side of the equation, as overly complex games have a limited market, even among nerds and geeks.

However, the problem of character development remains. The game might have a slick way of resolving how successfully you apply your skill at safecracking, orcslaying, or starship piloting. But how does your character gain and improve that skill? The results have always been unsatisfying.

Existing game systems can be plotted on a spectrum ranging from D&D on one end, and original rules Traveler on the other.
D&D had by far the most simplistic advancement scheme. Characters had a class, which gave them a package of skills or attributes. (Well, really it mostly gave them a different table for resolving combat.) As the campaign progressed, gold expropriated from dragons, orcs and Enron translated directly into experience points. At certain thresholds, you would move up a level and all of your skills would simultaneously increase. This is not in any way realistic, though certainly satisfying to the thirteen year old who loves to say he has a 25th level Assassin.* The focus is almost completely on advancement in the game.

On the other end of the scale was the Traveler system. Characters were created using a system that closely resembles what actually happens in real life. You start out at 18, with nothing more than remedial skills. Then, depending on the career track you select, you enlist in the navy, army, marines, interstellar scouts, or go to college. Your pre-game life is divided into four year terms, during which you have an opportunity to gain skills related to your profession. You can keep this up as long as you want balancing your greed for more skills with the realization that you don't want to be having an adventure with a 90-year old alter ego. Once this process ends, you begin the game. Once the game has started, it is exceedingly difficult to gain new skills or even improve old ones. You are stuck with what you have. Again, this is much like real life. The focus here is almost completely on character creation. (GURPS used a different approach, but was similar in that the focus is on character creation.)

Most games fall somewhere in between these two extremes. How do you create a game that allows your character to start with some skills, yet allows skills to be developed in game? How do you create a system that allows character creation in some detail, without predetermining the character’s future existence? How do you design a reward system that isn't based on the easily quantified cash, but isn't based solely on the subjective judgment of the DM? Moreover, how do you find a system that simultaneously isn't completely subjective and doesn't require hours of anal-retentive bookkeeping?

The last campaign I ran before I gave up on gaming completely eliminated most of the game system. The only concession I made to traditional role-playing was to keep a combat system, which I appropriated from White Wolf's Vampire games. And I only did that because the players insisted. Most of the time they were rolling dice just to amuse themselves, though I allowed them to think that the results affected the game.

I dodged the whole question of character development by having the players play themselves in the campaign. If they could do it, their character could do it. This was satisfactory in most respects, but sadly puts a great deal of limitations on the types of game you can play. (Worked great for a present day Cthulhu game, though.) Rewards were largely moot, since the campaign lasted only a few weeks in game time.

I've tried to see through to a way to combine the pristine simplicity of that last game with the requirements of other types of campaigns, but so far without success. The thing is, if you have a group of decent players, the game system is just a framework. The campaign is more important. The problem with adopting the no-system system is that it becomes hard to balance character creation with the needs of the campaign. You can't have the characters that are too powerful. Further, in a long campaign, you have to have some mechanism for rewarding players with improvements to their characters. Gold and wisdom is not enough. This, really, is the only thing that needs to be systematized. Everything else can be done on the fly, given enough background information and some quick thinking. But I haven’t figured it out yet.