There''s a saying in martil arts circles..."if you master one thing, you master everything". I think the saying means that to become a true master, you have to focus your attention on even the most minute detail in order to understand and make it a part of your skill. And this attention to detail and absolute focus is what eventually helps your other skills as well. A corollary saying is, "how can you do something diffucult if you can''t master the details?". SO this actually would corroborate what you suggest...to increase other skills slightly as your main skill advances.

In physiological terms there is a not well understood effect that if you train one muscle group very hard, ALL muscles will benefit to a small degree. The larger the muscle you train, the greater the bonus side effect. This is why Sprint runners also tend to be pretty well built, even though many of them don''t do any upper body exercises. So there''s also good reason to do this even for attributes as well as skills

There is something to be said for being a "jack of all trades, master of none" as well. Without having been exposed to many different perspectives, skills and knowledge, you have a one dimensional way of thinking. Perhaps you could have a "creativity" attribute. This attribute gets increased with the quantity of skills that you possess (as well as the level of the skill so as not to have a character load up on a million level 1 skills). This creativity attribute is a secondary attribute in many skills (though not all) in which imagination is a strong factor in the skill (many arts, sciences, programming,performance based skills, etc).

I like the idea dauntless, and the creativity skill could also be used as a basis for speed at increasing skills. ie, a creative person would develop their own sword menouvres, or come up with their own ways to effectivly crush herbs for a potion.

The creativity sounds like a good idea. Not sure how it combines with my "mental blocks" idea though...

Anyway, *bump*

(I''m too tired right now to write anything really coherent, so I''m bringing this thread where I can find it again)

I think doing creativity as (minimum(number_of_skills, average_skill_level)) should work.

My inclination would be to have creativity affect everything rather than just selected skills - either by having an unfamiliarity penalty for new or unusual uses of a skill which is reduced by creativity, or by having a flat bonus to all skills, or by having a bonus to attempts to improve in a skill (or bonus points to assign at level up if you really need to use a level based system...)

On the other hand, many players actually want their character to be the absolute strongest in a particular skill.

The game mechanics should probably encourage diversity, but is it better to enforce it, or to create a game where diverse characters are simply more effective? ie. instead of forcing a character to pick up court etiquette (for example), create a game such that having the skill is useful enough to put points into anyway.

Also you can force exactly the same thing by making skill costs proportional to skill level already developed.

As for realism, as a counter-point to Marcus the Legionary, consider Tiger Woods. Much of his development is centred around golf, and AFAIK he didn''t need to take up pottery to get better.

You guys are too darn smart

I always feel like I learn a lot from these silly forums.

I''ve always liked skill systems with specialization, where they generally use a top-down system - you improve in the top skill, and you get to improve some in the sub skills.

But now listening from this, it should almost work the opposite way - you improve on the teeny-tiny skill and the overall skill improves.

It also gives me more ideas about having truly MEANINGFUL outcomes of skill progression. I''m absolutely SICK of each skill level making things a little bit better. Really, every time a skill gets a point, there should be extremely noticeable differences to the way you play.

Like, say you have swordfighting. At level 1 you can do a simple slash. It''s not much, but it gets you by, especially if you time it well. Then you get level 2 and it teaches you block. Suddenly, the game became a DIFFERENT GAME. Going from simple slashes to slash/block changes everything.

Ok, sorry for being a bit off-topic
I''m not totally sure about the inspiration thing. It sounds good in your example, but I don''t think it should happen more than 1 or 2 times in a character''s life. I can see how some things that have related knowledge may be mutually beneficial (learning calculus helps you understand physics, learning physics helps in calculus) but the totally unrelated increase should be rare. Lets say the skill levels go from 1 to 30. A skill should only be blocked at around level 25, and throughout the game, you should only ever be able to raise 1 or two skills past that level. This could keep the effect to something cool rather than an odd quirky gimmick.

Also, some disciplines might be more easily blocked in this way than others. Some skills aren''t as difficult to master as others.

quote: Original post by Argus
On the other hand, many players actually want their character to be the absolute strongest in a particular skill.

The game mechanics should probably encourage diversity, but is it better to enforce it, or to create a game where diverse characters are simply more effective? ie. instead of forcing a character to pick up court etiquette (for example), create a game such that having the skill is useful enough to put points into anyway.

Throughout this thread, I have been thinking of a system which doesn''t force you to pick a specific skill to advance, rather making you learn any other skill... So there is no need for a character ever to learn court etiquette, but they will need to learn something other than pure hack''n''slash in order to reach the highest levels of swordcraft.

quote:
Also you can force exactly the same thing by making skill costs proportional to skill level already developed.

As for realism, as a counter-point to Marcus the Legionary, consider Tiger Woods. Much of his development is centred around golf, and AFAIK he didn''t need to take up pottery to get better.

I don''t know Tiger Wood''s life story, but I expect he has some skills beside golfing. Also, with the version of my "mental blocks" where they trigger on failing to advance three times in a row, some characters will be able to max out their swordfighting skill without ever doing anything else.

quote: Original post by Saluk
You guys are too darn smart

*blushes* thanks

quote:
It also gives me more ideas about having truly MEANINGFUL outcomes of skill progression. I''m absolutely SICK of each skill level making things a little bit better. Really, every time a skill gets a point, there should be extremely noticeable differences to the way you play.

Like, say you have swordfighting. At level 1 you can do a simple slash. It''s not much, but it gets you by, especially if you time it well. Then you get level 2 and it teaches you block. Suddenly, the game became a DIFFERENT GAME. Going from simple slashes to slash/block changes everything.

In practice, in order to maintain a sense of progress, you''d probably want to have some sort of sub-levels in that system so that the character could get better at slashing while he waits to get the block, etc.

quote:
Ok, sorry for being a bit off-topic
I''m not totally sure about the inspiration thing. It sounds good in your example, but I don''t think it should happen more than 1 or 2 times in a character''s life. I can see how some things that have related knowledge may be mutually beneficial (learning calculus helps you understand physics, learning physics helps in calculus) but the totally unrelated increase should be rare. Lets say the skill levels go from 1 to 30. A skill should only be blocked at around level 25, and throughout the game, you should only ever be able to raise 1 or two skills past that level. This could keep the effect to something cool rather than an odd quirky gimmick.

Also, some disciplines might be more easily blocked in this way than others. Some skills aren''t as difficult to master as others.

When you get blocked in a given skill would be heavily implementation dependent - and also probably rely a little on luck. The totally unrelated increase (or in my later versions unblocking) isn''t about needing calculus to solve planetary orbits in physics, it''s about not being able to figure out integration, going away and doing something completely unrelated (kicking a football or playing Half Life or writing some code) and when you come back, being able to breeze past the point you were hung up on before.

As far as possible, I like to keep my suggestions for RPG mechanics pretty modular and independent of any specific implementation - on the other hand, I also try to keep them mutually compatible, so I''m actually thinking of a system with an asymptotic limit to skill level so no-one ever actually maxes out, skill improvement based on my experimenting/practicing system (in the learning through failure thread) and I''m still trying to figure out the hit point equivalent...

I''ve just had a thought. Different disciplines assisting each other is rarely a matter of serendipity. Rather, when one reaches a certain expertise in both of the disciplines, one has a good enough grasp of the common elements that they begin to seem to be the same thing. When one first learns about algebra and geometry they are completely seperate things. But later with analytical geometry and calculus, they are united and learning more about geometry gives insight into algebra and vice versa.

So as a model of a skill system imagine a sandbox. At the beginning of the game it is completely empty, just bare wood. But on the floor of the sandbox are various points, one per possible skill.

Every time a skill is practiced, a little bit of sand is sprinkled over the point that represents that skill. And to determine how good somebody is at a skill, look at the amount of sand nearby. There might be a radius determined by some attribute (intelligence, creativity, player level, or perhaps skill by skill). So the computer calculates how much sand is within that radius and that is the skill rating.

Now, as time goes on there are many different piles, one per skill. But like any sand pile, the more you put on top, the more it spreads out. So at some point, especially if the radii increase as time goes on, piles will start to overlap. In the beginning only nearby sand piles will affect things. But at the end of the game, many different piles will affect a skill.

Now to actually implement this, many things can be dumbed down. The sandpiles could be quantized and one could make the system such that the different sandpiles don''t pile together. They could all be in alternate grids and all the alternate grids are added together when summing a skill.

Anyhow, this seems like it would model things well. Nearby skills would always effect a skill more than faraway skills. But as the player became more advanced (and perhaps the radii increased), each skill would effect the others more and more.

-D

A few days ago in World Classics class, I was thinking about a Highlander-esque system, and found myself integrating some elements from this discussion. I should be writing a paper, so I''ll try to be brief:

My idea involved one hundred characters, each of which had one "attribute" from a list of 100 attributes, which are organized into ten categories. For instance, physical capabilities would be a category, and so ten random people would be imbued with one superhuman physical trait (strength, speed, agility, endurance, etc. I didn''t get into details) In that skill they would have a 55% capability, and they would have 5% in all the other skills in that category, so the strength guy would have 55% strength, 5% speed, etc. This is of course an abstract, and how it would interact with an actual stat system is up for grabs.

Anyway, any time you manage to kill another character, you get their skill power(s) (no doubt with some fancy pyrotechnics). So strength kills speed, so he has 60%, 60%, and eight 10% superpowers in the "physical power" category. As the game narrows down, you''ll have characters with 20 or more skills, and if you get all ten of a category, then they''re all up to 100%.

There''s a little bit more to this system, but if I get it to where it''s worth discussing I''ll start a thread for it.

The point is that grouping the skill into complimentary divisions can lead to a more harmonius stat development. Maybe subdivision could help organize the system.

Just a thought.