DarkLightHitomi:
3d6 is a good description for normal people's stats. The average score is 9-12, which gives an average rank of 2.
And it seems this to be determined by a roll with dice added together to get a result. The norms for 3d6 are 10 and 11, which tally well with the stated average score. Results of 10 and 11 each occur 27 times out of 216 permutations. Thus a norm occurs 54 times in 216, or 25% of the time. An "average score" would occur 104 times in 216, or a little more than 48%.
quote:
People's average tier is 3-4. Commoner level people are generally 3, while those who get better educated and experienced often get to tier 4. Getting tier 5 is uncommon, and is often the leading people of a nation, the heroes and household names.
I'll have to go back and re-read again, because I don't have a clear idea of what "tier" is being used to represent. (Probably due to my lack of memory these days...)
Hmm...Tier, a character's overall agency in life. Is "agency" a character's ability to determine and to act independently of others? (Do I get the concept?)
quote:
Traveller is one game I have not had a chance to even look at yet, though I haven't really heard anything that makes me want to give it a high priority as it sounds very much not really my style.
I won't argue the merits of
Traveller based on anyone's personal preference, but the mechanic I stated above is an elegant, understandable, task system modified by me to accommodate varying degrees of success or failure.
The basic mechanic is flexible, dead simple, consistent in all cases, and only varies in how the Difficulty Rating is determined for a particular task, more notably for combat tasks, which include the concept of an opposing roll.
Modifications to the basic task roll are made for applicable skills, "stats", and other factors (more so for combat tasks) as are specified in a Task Definition block. (As new tasks are needed, I discuss with players and we define them together.)
quote:
quote:
A technique of organization that may help is to write an outline for the system. If the outline goes past one page, you'll have trouble fitting the whole system in two.
A major part of this however is figuring how much explanation is needed for various parts. For example, Strength can by with a sentence or less, but Independence probably needs more than that.
And also, concise writing, which is hard to find even for non-autistic people.
The whole purpose of an outline is to set down the major points of the document briefly, and to provide a framework to help organize one's thinking. Don't explain at all - create a short list of major topics, sort of like a table of contents, then go back to each major topic and list under it subtopics relevant to it.
You'll find that you can work from the merest of outlines for a simple project, or "drill down" where more research and development is needed.
Example:
1.0) Characters
1.1) Attributes
1.1.1) Strength
1.1.1.1) Definition of Strength
1.1.2) Intelligence
...
1.1.6) Charisma
1.2) Skills
1.2.1) Spells
1.2.2) Common Skills
1.2.3) Combat Skills
and so forth. Different numbering systems are out there for use in outlines, or you can leave them numberless, as best suits your purpose.
Concise writing means using fewer more effective words to get one's point across. That's all - there's no magic formula for it. If one's thoughts are disorganized, one's writing is also likely to be disorganized.
With respect to System Reference Documents:
quote:
Depends on what you see as the difference. Is gurps a system, or a SRD?
{snipped: stuff about D&D 3.x, a system with which I'm not all that familiar, having stopped playing AD&D about version 2.0. No accounting for taste, huh?}
quote:
However, a good line to divide the two is to say that a system needs no modification to be played, while a SRD needs to molded before use.
Using that definition, the core of what I'm doing (the 2-page part, even if it ends up as 3-pages or so) is SRD, while the blocks I'll be writing later will be more of a system, just pick the blocks you need/want and go.
Ah. This definitely brings it into focus for me. So... what we should concentrate on for now is what those first few pages (the basic system) will look like.