 skill grouping, another thread |
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 Jul 3 2006, 03:13 PM
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#76
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Manus Celer Dei  Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802  |
I believe you mean "more is more." ~J, fighting the urge to put calculus into SR3R since 2005 |
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Jul 3 2006, 10:29 PM
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#77
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,066 Joined: 5-February 03 Member No.: 4,017 |
Wait, does this mean we won't need background in differential equations to calculate blast damage for a 5 kilo chunk of C12? Drek that, at least make it an optional rule (in the same way dice are optional). |
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Jul 4 2006, 05:04 AM
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#78
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
i'm not sure why you're laughing. the world is full of people who are masters within their chosen figting style, but who are next to usless in an actual fight because they're too used to the limited focus of their own sport. case in point: the goal of Olympic boxing is not to beat people up, but to score points. one of the possible ways to score points is to beat up your opponent, but that's not actually necessary. it's easily possible, in Olympic boxing, for a boxer to win a match even if he gets knocked out. |
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Jul 4 2006, 07:32 AM
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#79
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Grand Master of Run-Fu Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,840 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Tir Tairngire Member No.: 178 |
FWIW, one thing the book does mention is that the skills are always set as appropriate to your setting. For example, the Drive skill would be cars nowaday, but would be hovercars in the future and stagecoaches in the past. If you've got a guy from the Wild West who's time-transported to the modern day, he wouldn't be able to use his Drive skill on a truck, since it's not appropriate to his setting. If you want to do something similar to the other skills, that's fine as well.
Not with a lasso, not really. I just loaned out my book, so I don't have a page reference to give you. However, it's all you really need: you can call for a Trick, and describe it however you like. Since it all works out to be mechanically the same, you have one rule doing the work of dozens. This is how a unified system should work.
Under SR4, with an Incompetence, he can't even default. So, despite the fact that he might be one of the world's greatest riflemen, he can't even find the trigger on a pistol; somehow, he's never even seen or heard of a pistol before. Once he buys off that incompetence, not only does he miraculously find the trigger after weeks of searching; suddenly he's outshooting people who have trained their entire lives, and teach pistol shooting for a living. The problem here is the all-or-nothing model of the rules. There's absolutely no middle ground, he swings from one extreme to another almost instantly.
As mfb pointed out, tournament skills seldom equate to real-life combat skills. In reality, sport Tae Kwon Do would be better classified as a knowledge skill than a combat skill; it's almost completely useless in a real fight. I hold no advanced belt rankings, and I've torn apart tournament winners in full-contact sparring. At any event, Savage Worlds uses the same open-ended knowledge skill system that Shadowrun does; it's a catchall category, and occasionally it includes active skill abilities. For example, if you had Knowledge: Skateboarding, in either Shadowrun or Savage Worlds, it would represent your ability to ride a skateboard. Another example would be Knowledge: Ballroom Dancing.
I'd be very hesitant to call the rules simple or light. Wushu is simple and light. Capes is simple and light, although it's also so bizzarre as to be about as confusing as a more complex system. Savage Worlds is solidly middle-of-the-road on that spectrum, it just runs faster than the simpler and lighter ones.
Fair enough. I submit, though, that if you gave it A Grubman Challenge, you would find that you missed the realism far less than you think.
I do, and I can give you the classic example. Which is more fun: when you're playing the game, rolling dice and interacting with each other; or when you're all flipping through various rulebooks, citing obscure references, and arguing over minute details? |
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Jul 4 2006, 08:43 AM
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#80
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Decker on the Threshold Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,922 Joined: 14-March 04 Member No.: 6,156 |
No, I'm sure that's still in there; he said calculus, not differential equations. :) But I'm a bit sad we're tossing the idea of doing a line integral of a randomly-generated vector field representing friction to 1) determine whether or not a Crash Test needs to be made for vehicles attempting a hairpin turn, and 2) determine if a weapon hit has enough force to cause a Knockdown test. That's two places such a rule would be used; we'd actually be streamlining! :D |
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Jul 4 2006, 11:38 AM
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#81
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,066 Joined: 5-February 03 Member No.: 4,017 |
Ah, that's a relief. The issue with a randomly generated vector field is that the relevant net forces can be furthur approximated into a single random value. So the only difference is whether you want to roll 300 D6 and have them almost always cancel out (or be ignored) or if you just want to roll 3 D6 (open) to construct a net friction vector. |
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Jul 4 2006, 12:16 PM
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#82
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Midnight Toker Group: Members Posts: 7,686 Joined: 4-July 04 From: Zombie Drop Bear Santa's Workshop Member No.: 6,456 |
No. No. No. Those who practice full-contact sparing regulary will have a great advantage over those who practce tournament-rules point sparring.That is a fact. To win a fight you must know how to hit and how to be hit. Boxing is a full contact sport. The point of the game is beat your opponent senseless so that he cannot stand up. An Olympic level boxer has Olympic-level full-contact combat experience. |
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Jul 4 2006, 02:16 PM
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#83
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Grand Master of Run-Fu Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,840 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Tir Tairngire Member No.: 178 |
As mfb pointed out, Olympic tournament boxing is sufficiently removed from real combat, that isn't necessarily the case. Your point is more true for other styles of boxing, but even then, it's not really the case: boxing is loaded with illegal moves, places where you can and cannot be hit, and depends on a referee to ensure fair play. The fact that it's a contact sport helps some, but it's not remotely the same thing as full-contact sparring, or real-world combat training. Boxing is a game of points, not a self-defense or fighting art. |
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Jul 4 2006, 03:55 PM
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#84
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,430 Joined: 10-January 05 From: Fort Worth, Texas Member No.: 6,957 |
This would be a case of Incompetence not being appropriate for the character coupled with the downside of the seperated skills system. The flip side of that in Savage Worlds would be a guy that has high shooting but has never seen bows and blowguns being able to use them with no problems. Both systems have flaws, that's already been said. I prefer the flaws of seperated skills, you prefer flaws of grouped skills. It's cool.
The flip side for grouped skills would be the all-or-all model of the rules. Unless you purposefully limit yourself through GM Fiat and/or roleplaying drawbacks you know all things within your group, even those that don't make sense for you to know.
So then what you're saying is that you can beat people up with knowledge skills. Are there rules for this? It definitely sounds interesting. Can you give me a book and page reference so I can check it out the next time I'm at my FLGS? It might be something I could modify for use in other games. Is there a built-in correlation to knowledge vs. fighting, or can you have d12+12 (exaggeration) in knowledge: boxing and be unstoppable in the ring, but completely useless on the streets if you didn't spend the points on Fighting?
Untrue. Those would represent your knowledge of skateboarding or ballroom dancing. You need an active skill to actually do it, although SR3 had complimentary skills which would let your knowledges help your actives. I don't recall offhand if SR4 has those or not.
Mail me a book and I'll tell you if I agree or not. ;)
Toss me a book and I will. I don't feel the need or even desire to buy a book I don't know that I'll use. We play a bunch of systems already and I could instead spend the money on supplements for those RPGs, cards, or even (gasp!) food for my kids. ;)
Two problems with that: One, some people prefer digging through rulebooks and arguing examples. They didn't invent the term "rules lawyer" out of thin air. Munchkins also frequently do this. Two, you're assuming that more rules means you're digging through sourcebooks a lot. Rolemaster has a ton of rules. Star Fleet Battles has even more. I rarely have to dig through rulebooks on either of those. Other systems in our group have their own experts, so we don't dig through the rules in those much either. The only time digging through rules is an issue is when we play a new game. Toss me a copy of SW and I'll tell you how much we have to dig through. ;)
Tell that to the kids that beat up a bully because their dads taught them to box. :) |
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Jul 4 2006, 04:08 PM
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#85
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,889 Joined: 3-August 03 From: A CPI rank 1 country Member No.: 5,222 |
Regardless of the name of the group, Knowledge skills in many RPGs do not purely pertain to knowledge. For example, see: Talismongering (MitM pp. 30, 40-42). Applications of Knowledge skills in SR3 can be just as or more physical in nature than those of certain Active skills. It is often said that Knowledge skills would more accurately be called Background skills or Secondary skills, or something of that nature. The only problem I can think of in placing very physically demanding skills in the Knowledge group in SR3 is that Knowledge skills are all Int-linked. |
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Jul 4 2006, 04:19 PM
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#86
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
Flipping through sourcebooks, citing obscure references, and arguing over minute details, of course. Why do you think I spend so much time here? ~J |
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Jul 4 2006, 04:21 PM
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#87
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Shadowrun Setting Nerd Group: Banned Posts: 3,632 Joined: 28-June 05 From: Pissing on pedestrians from my electronic ivory tower. Member No.: 7,473 |
Performance/Artistic skills are also Knowledge Skills in SR3.
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Jul 4 2006, 06:05 PM
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#88
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
the boxing thing is, again, why i think a truly realistic skill system would be so complex as to be unplayable. boxing contributes more to actual fighting skill than your standard McDojo training, but not as much as going out on the street and getting your teeth kicked in on a regular basis. i, personally, am not interested in trying to boil that down into a ruleset.
at any rate, neither i nor Cain are saying that you can use knowledge skills to beat people up. we're saying that if you wanted to run an Olympic match in a realistic fashion, you wouldn't be making straight combat rolls in any system--you'd have to have some kind of interplay between the combat rolls and some sort of knowledge or performance skill related to Olympic boxing, because there are a lot of moves in Olympic boxing that are illegal. this holds true for SW, SR, d20, Traveller, BattleTech, Warhammer RPG, HackMaster, AD&D, Snakes on a Plane RPG... that said, i would probably just give the Olympic boxer d8 Fightin' and have done with it. like i've said before, grouped skill systems exaggerate the connections between skills. no reason to throw a wrench in the works by making an exception for Olympic boxing (especially since, as hyzmarca said, boxers of any stripe have the advantage of actually knowing how to take and gives real hits). if you want to play someone who only knows how to do Olympic boxing, in SW, too bad. the system is not designed to allow that. the other side of that coin is that if you're playing an SR boxer and you want to pick up a knife in the middle of a street fight, too bad. the system is not allowed to allow that. |
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Jul 4 2006, 06:08 PM
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#89
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,066 Joined: 5-February 03 Member No.: 4,017 |
You should. Get a monologue on pre-post-impressionist literature going and many people will react in a way that is very similar to their reaction to getting punched in the gut. |
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Jul 4 2006, 06:10 PM
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#90
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
the filibuster is mightier than the sword!
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Jul 4 2006, 06:17 PM
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#91
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,430 Joined: 10-January 05 From: Fort Worth, Texas Member No.: 6,957 |
mfb: I agree with pretty much everything you've stated. How's that for weirdness? ;)
Cain implied there was some tie between knowledge: boxing and fighting in SW in that an Olympic boxer would rely on knowledge: boxing to hurt people in the ring. Is this true? If so I'd like to know how it's done to see if it's something I could extrapolate into other systems when it could do some good. If not it's just another Cain house rule that tries to wind it's way into a discussion and I feel obliged to call him on it. :) |
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Jul 4 2006, 06:30 PM
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#92
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
if that's what you took from Cain's post, you misread. Cain didn't say anything about hurting people in the ring. and, as i pointed out (and Cain agreed with), hurting people really isn't the point of Olympic boxing--though it comes a lot closer than many other martial arts.
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Jul 4 2006, 06:44 PM
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#93
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,430 Joined: 10-January 05 From: Fort Worth, Texas Member No.: 6,957 |
You can't win a fight without hurting your opponent. If you're winning your olympic level fight using knowledge: boxing, there there is a correlation between knowledge and fighting. Or are you saying that knowing where you're allowed to hit is where the knowledge comes in? If so, then how do you limit a character's fighting skill when he finds himself in a situation where he can't use it all (such as a tournament)? Are there rules for that or is it strictly down to what the GM decides (possibly with player input)? |
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Jul 4 2006, 08:35 PM
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#94
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
i'm saying that boxing isn't a "hurting people" skill. it's a "hurting people in specific, limited ways within a specific, limited set of circumstances" skill. as for running an Olympic boxing match in-game, you'd have to have house rules to determine when an attack counts for points and when it doesn't. making a point-worthy attack would be where the knowledge skill comes in. it's not really a knowledge skill, in the way calculus is a knowledge skill, as SL James pointed out--it's more like performance skill.
at least, that's what my houserule would be, if i were going to attempt to model an Olympic match. like i said, though, i'd probably not bother. |
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Jul 4 2006, 08:39 PM
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#95
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,430 Joined: 10-January 05 From: Fort Worth, Texas Member No.: 6,957 |
So it would fit as an SR3 pseudo-knowledge skill but not an SR4 one. Cool.
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Jul 4 2006, 11:13 PM
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#96
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,430 Joined: 10-January 05 From: Fort Worth, Texas Member No.: 6,957 |
I know that one example does not make an argument. I'm not trying to make an argument with this post. I jut found it interesting. I was watching a UFC unleashed featuring Royce Gracie and he walked all over a "living legend" with 10 black belts and his own martial art form creation under his belt. So much for "the well rounded fighter always wins." :)
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Jul 4 2006, 11:15 PM
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#97
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
Bad example, Gracie's a mixed-monkey as well.
~J |
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Jul 4 2006, 11:49 PM
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#98
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,430 Joined: 10-January 05 From: Fort Worth, Texas Member No.: 6,957 |
Yeah, but he's primarily a single style. It's rare to see him do any striking except what's necessary to move someone's hands or feet where he wants them.
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Jul 5 2006, 02:35 AM
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#99
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Midnight Toker Group: Members Posts: 7,686 Joined: 4-July 04 From: Zombie Drop Bear Santa's Workshop Member No.: 6,456 |
I would disagree that a boxing match is a game of points. It can be a game of points but that isn't a satasfying way to play it. Judicial decisions will always be somewhat arbitrary. Any self respecting boxer would attempt to win the game way it is ment to be won - by beating the other guy until he is no longer able to stand under his own power. Winning with points is just lame.
The difference between Boxing and the generic "full contact sparring" that has been mentioned is one of degree. All forms of full contact sporting and training have rules to ensure safety. If they don't then it isn't friendly sparring, its combat. The arguement about which full-contact rules are best one of methodology and ideaology and it cannot be solved on an internet forum. As for having olympic boxing in game it isn't that difficult to accomplish in SR3. If the characters have suficient strength someone will be knocked out in the first round. I'd put boxing glaves at STR-1 Stun and without armor that damage can add up fast. Back to the original topic, specific skills are most imporatant in the areas where a game specializes while general skill are more useful in generalist games or secondary elements of a game. SR3 would make a crappy medical simulation, for example. Every doctor would be jsut as good as every other doctor in every field. Since there is only one biotech skill there is little reason for a doctor in a dedicated medical drama to spend points on anything else. If you seperate biotech into many specific but related medical skills some doctors will specialize and an entire team will be necessary to provide adequite care in all cases. However, there is also the case where some similar skills are more general than others. In SR3, very few people take the oral slasher skill because it is so worthless realitive to other skills. |
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Jul 5 2006, 03:25 AM
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#100
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
pro boxing is only judged on points if a KO or disqualification doesn't decide the match. Olympic boxing is wholly point-based.
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