Re: Experience as "currency" (Re: Merged proposal)

[Brian Thomas <thomas@chaupher.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

Ken writes:
>
> Wow--conciliation and compromise.  A Crossfire first?
>
	Not so fast!! :)
>
> I don't see any real motivation for moving beyond the four basic classes, and
>

	Hmm. Looks like time to do some "motivating" :)  I have several
    good reasons for wanting something besides the "four basic classes".

    To briefly review, as currently hashed out (within my understanding)
    we have been talking about a new experience/race/skills system which
    will feature:

	- separate player choices of race and profession.
		
	- multiple catagories in which a player may gain experience.

	- Two kinds of skills will be available: "associated" skills
	  which are associated with a catagory of experience and 
	  "unassociated" or "miscellaneous" skills which will not be
	  associated with any experience catagory.

	- experience will be now only be gained through the use of
	  skills associated to one of the catagories of experience.


     Currently, there has been some talk of 4 or more catagories of experience.
     Under a proposal by Peter, 4 catagories of experience would exist:
     cleric/fighter/magic/thief. It is not the number of catagories, but
     rather the naming which lies at the heart of my disagreement with this scheme.

     Why does it matter? The most important reasons are:

	1) How to associate skills to the catagories. What about skills which 
	are not related to cleric/fighter/magician/thief experience but should 
	have a graduated effectiveness? For example, "bargaining". In which of 
	the aforementioned 4 does it fit with? Adoption of "profession" names 
	for each of the experience catagories will constrict the creativity with which 
	new skills may be created.

	2) Ecstetics. The creation of non-thief/fighter/magician/cleric/ characters
	will be impossible. Remember that this system is saying all character
	professions are a 'blend' of the available experience catagories. Creating
        professions from a blend of professions irks me too. With all due respects,
        this naming scheme is not very parsimonious (or elegant).

     What are the options? Well, I'm sure that there are a million ways to name
     kinds of experience available to a player. The point is to find names which 
     will not lead to further degrees of freedom (if possible). What are the current
     independant measures of a CF character? I can think of 7; We describe 
     a character by 6 "fundimental" stats: Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha. and 
     "experience". With the inclusion of spells, skills and possessions you may 
     completely describe any character that can be generated in CF (I am of course
     omitting trival aspects like character name and title). Notice! none of the
     mentioned ways of "characterizing" has *anything to do with profession*!

     Why not choose to relate the experience catagories to one (or more) of the 
     independant measures which already exist? For example, an alternative choice 
     (which I advocate) is to relate the experience catagories to the "stats". 
     This seems to be a more "natural" way.

     Ken has raised a good critism of this.

> I'm not particularly compelled by assigning skills to particular stats.  A typical
> skill is dependant on several stats, e.g. lockpicking should be a factor of
> dexterity for the physical aspect of jiggling the tools around, intelligence,
> to figure out the intricacies of this particular lock, and wisdom, for how many
> similar locks you've seen before.

      Skills (in real life) are certainly a mixture of many things. But in a 
      game we cannot hope to simulate reality nor would I believe CF to be 
      a very fun game if it did. Remember we have already done this in so many ways.
      Why have only 6 fundemental stats?? Why not 100 or a 1000? The reason is that
      it would be a nightmare to keep track of so many stats. Thus, I feel it is ok 
      to simplify the relationship between the stats and the skills. You have to 
      "make the cut" somewhere. 

						As always, the implacable :),  

							b.t.