Fallout: Equestria Resource

Requesting a Fallout Equestria RPG Sandboxy Game! Also LOTS of ramblings on the Fallout Equestria RPG in general!

Hi everypony! I'm Gavin, and I have a biiiig old writeup of various Fallout Equestria stuff. I'm here because I love this setting, I, uh, have a love/hate relationship with the rules, I love the show, I love role playing and role playing games in general (pen and paper or computer) and I love the Fallout games. I'm thus seeking a game, but I have some, um, particular things to talk about! Sorry if I'm a bit long-winded, but I have a lot on my mind, and would like some helpful responses to my topics! Also, if you just want to discuss rules and metagame stuff without discussing possible specific games, I put a second post in a reply and you can skip most of this post if you want.

So it seems that mostly this forum is where people find IRC or Skype games. I'm... a little bit hesitant for that. I don't have a lot of specific blocks of time to schedule to dedicate to an online game like that. I've thus been favoring 'play by post' games on forums. I'd love to do that here, or, alternately, do a skype game that is built to function like a play-by-post. After all, Skype keeps text logs, and, with a bit of doing, can do some sort of play by post alternative. I could even download another text program that offers similar logging features, allowing people who weren't able to RP, to 'read up', if someone wants. That doesn't mean that I will never have time for live gaming, I just don't know *when* I'll have blocks of time. Perhaps Sunday afternoon's EST?

Another thing I've noticed is that, on other websites... people try to shoehorn Fallout Equestria into things it isn't good at. What it IS good at, very good at, is evoking the best parts of the feelings of the games, like you get from playing a highly modded Fallout 3, Fallout 2, or Fallout New Vegas, or one of the 'completely new content and new story' mods like Project Brazil for New Vegas. But with this roleplaying game, the limiters of even those modded games are taken off. It also is great at including the best parts of the various lore of the different Fallout Equestria stories, and be able to just go do Adventure! things. I believe it does this because rules of the game -- what the crunch spends time on -- should inform the gameplay, which this game does well. The rules spend time on gear, perks, obtaining quest perks, crafting, character building, looting, scavenging, exploring things that require skill and attribute use, and fighting: things that should be a large part of the actual play of the game. To me, this is a huge core of the Fallout experience, with the social side of things being important, of course, and not neglected, but not the core focus of the game. The core focus is self-directed exploration and the things that stem from that. Unfortunately, the last game I had... the GM didn't understand that.

What I have found, at least at other places these games take place, is the games that many GM's run don't really let you do that. You are fairly railroaded, GM's like to give urgency to what's going on around you, so you have to deal with what they throw at you all the time, they want to show or tell a particular story... and it doesn't feel like Fallout. Fallout is, at it's best, a meta-stable situation, where you can totally just pick a direction and go walking and see what you stumble upon, with occasional, optional delves into set-piece situations (DLC's...) where you are thrust into an urgent, fairly linear situation, and the choice to eventually, when you are ready, go follow a big overarching plot to really change the area you are in, in one of many possible branching ways. And you can easily and readily pick up a whole ton of sidequests for xp and loot or to improve lives or change lives of others or solve problems or whatever, wherever you go, which you can do or ignore mostly as you want.

And the mods? They add stuff like extra crafting, extra items to find, more ways of customizing things, more optional sidequests, extra perks, extra traits, the ability to have more traits, tweaks in perks and traits or the ability to take more traits (starting with three would be nice!), more interesting places to explore, more variety of enemies, the ability to build up homes or stable settlements or vehicles or whatever, and other 'fun things to do'. And I find that sort of thing absent in many play by post games.

I want THAT experience. That there is a larger world, that you are a character that is interesting both mechanically and socially, has things to do in combat and out, that there is a larger plot, but things are relatively stable, just needing a catalyst (the player characters) to get things changed, and you can really easily find adventure and loot and good folk and bad folk and normal folk just trying to get by, and really make a difference in a self-directed way. I'm not really looking to talk to or interact with main characters from the 'major' fallout equestria stories; the game should feel like our own movie, you know? Maybe adventuring in an area not described in one of the main stories, or a slightly different version from one of the main stories with a different cast, or a slightly different timeframe (pre-Littlepip? with the possibility of altering the timeline from canon?). Whatever, I like the idea of exploring and not really knowing what you will find! I think this ruleset and setting could do this better than anything else, and I love it for that. Even though I have criticisms on some particular aspects of the rules, I want to make it clear that the reason I am saying these criticisms is because it is sooooo good at evoking the best parts of Fallout, that I am driven to look at some of the possible flaws and ways to fix them, due to the incredible potential of the game.

Earlier, I mentioned my, uh, love/hate relationship with the rules. This game... feels very 1990's. I don't mean that in a good way. While it evokes Fallout well, it has some issues that stem mainly from an understanding based on assumptions from badly-designed 1990's role playing games and, sadly, some rules concepts from Fallout 2 that were improved away in New Vegas and especially the mod for it, Project Brazil (which you guys should totally play). In particular, fumbles are very very odd in this game, and don't fit the lore or gameplay of fallout games at all, and unlike other D100 games (like FFG's games), this game is absolutely unnecessarily hesitant to give out very large bonuses or penalties (above +/- 30 or 3 for attributes, or simply remove critical fumbles and make it simply 'you fail' rather than 'you fail spectacularly', and remove fumbles on special attributes entirely) on skills and attributes, which makes the math not function well. This has the effect of either the game is a complete comedy of errors that don't fit the stories at all, or the characters generally are high enough level to succeed on whatever they want, with the occasional verisimilitude-breaking fumble.

This could be improved by the GM understanding a very, very basic thing: you should only roll where there should be a major chance of a dramatic failure, and further, as skills increase, the scenarios where a highly skilled character has to roll start getting rarer and rarer for simple things, and only need to roll for more difficult things, because of the assumptions inherent in their level of skill. Of course there are other possible patches to actually fix the quite broken rules (like putting together some formal skill thresholds, a la some parts of New Vegas or better yet, Project Brazil [did I mention you should play that mod?], where if you are above that you don't have to roll for certain things, or something like fate points like FFG's D100 games) rather than have the GM arbitrarily gloss over them, but the simplest way is for the GM to just realize the rules have major 'this doesn't make sense in how this world should work' issues, and just eyeball it in-game.

Another thing I think the game doesn't do well is the levelling system, where I believe perhaps a departure from the assumptions of the video games might be necessary for gameplay purposes. If you take a close look at the various versions of Fallout Equestria, you notice that 'just adding a level' doesn't necessarily really improve a character's capabilities very much. What does improve it is access to powerful Perks -- which seem to be stratified into tiers. There's 'stuff available below level six', 'stuff available below level 12', and 'stuff available before level 17', to name a few, with thresholds at levels 6, 12, and 16 where much more powerful perks become available. This, combined with the fact that before about level 11, you won't generally have enough skill points to be genuinely competent at your talents, means that the game shouldn't have 'XP' based levels at all:

Instead, you should start at level 11 (because 12 gives access to too many really good perks), and then after several MAJOR quests, be bumped up to 16, then after a lot more questing, maybe 21 or 22, then maybe 27, then 30 or so, over the entire life of a game -- with the expectation that you are going to be spending quite a lot of time STAYING at a particular tier. This makes levelling a Really Big Deal, where the character actually feels and plays differently. Instead, at each tier, power should be obtained by non-level based measures: improved gear, mini-perks that offer training in various subsystems (spells, recipes, martial arts training, traits not normally available to you that enable extra gameplay options, perks that aren't in your character concept as bonus perks but still enable useful things to do, achievement perks, book perks, power in society, reputation, allies, etc. etc.)

I've also been looking at various versions of the rules, and I have to say, I like the core skill list, the one from here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fsN ... k0xo4/edit
best, rather than mad modd's, the master, or muny's changes on the skill list. I do, however, think that the various homebrew versions of the game online should be mined for rules, perks, gear options, subsystems, ideas, etc., in any game, even one with the default skill list. I especially like the book perks, though I'd go even further, to make books not increase skills at all, make them more like http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/19394/? and re-tool Bookworm to be more like that mod, and remove the availability of an item beyond 'extra special' or the 'memory implant' that can increase intelligence. This is mainly because of the fact that, if you focus on a skill and get it up to 100 (or 115 or whatever), and you suddenly find a bunch of skill books, they are useless to you, and they should be useful to someone so interested in a topic, and not rip him off because he didn't seek out skill books in his favorite topics sooner, or he didn't beeline to whatever intelligence increasing item is in world sooner.

I especially like perks that enable things like other (in any system where skill ranks that are gained in gameplay are removed and alternate bonuses given instead), a perk that I found called 'On My Honor', that essentially enables achievements that would presumably (in a system where you can't get skill points from books in an unplanned way) give access to an achievement perks system for minor perks and benefits (oooh!). Thus the player characters are given incentive to actually go out and do things that others will notice!

I also really like the idea of an adventuring team that is really one of each race, and that each character brings something tot he table that no other race could possibly bring. Looking at the various rules variants, with an eye to realizing that maybe some of the extra races added were done a bit frivolously, I figured out that there are about four archetypes, and four races, that the game really really enables that would work well and do things no other race or build can do. The four races and archetypes are: Earth Pony: The Builder/Creator. Griffin: The Gambler/Scavenger. Zebra: The Face/Mystic. Changeling: The Mage/Supporter. With these archetypes, each of the characters has dramatically different perk sets so the *mechanics* of the characters can be really different, to work together well with each other, with some niche protection, where the characters would cover each other's weaknesses, where each would have interestings things to do both in combat, while exploring, and while in civilization.

To support this conclusion found a total of FOUR perk lists for various version of the games:
the main one: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... Pb0E#gid=0
the 'master' version: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... web#gid=11
mad modd's version: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... li=1#gid=0
the muny version: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... aHc#gid=11

And I made four draft character sheets to show my ideas (I'd like to take the engineer, if a GM would run this, btw)

The earth pony engineer, markspony, and survivalist:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

The griffin gambler, scavenger, lock-picker and dealmaker:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

The Zebra voice/face and shaman and mystic alchemist/martial artist:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

The Changeling unicorn-attuned mage and doctor and scientist
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0

A bit of a guide to these characters. The good thing about these is that each has, implied by the mechanics, things they can do and do well, in combat, out of combat, at a town, seveal things to quest for to give them extra capabilities and goals, things they can be trained in, things that would be useful and meaningful for them to get, some implied history, etc. etc.

The earth pony is a bit of a geek, maybe a touch Asperger's, but mostly worked out how to hide it, though is still sensitive to loud noises, loves reading and cooking and brewing and tinkering with firearms, armor, and mechanical things, and wants to show the wastes that they can make new, good things from what's around them and that it isn't actually as hard as one would think to rebuild. She has a lot of things she would want to quest for: some weapon types that would let her have suppressed weapons that aren't complete crap (sensitive ears...), some rare ammunition dies to make custom ammunition for those weapons and supplies to make more of her favorite ammunition types, a set of really good high end earplugs that only lower loud sounds but let quiet sounds through, she'd want to go hunting for meat (radhogs?) for leather, fat for survivalist things like soap, at some point she would go on a hunt for high quality gems and crystals, she'd want to quest for things like alternate recipes for sparkle colas, like the internal recipes they were testing, she'd want to quest for recipes that make food and drink varieties of rare Zebra basic-category alchemy recipes that don't take zebra magic to make, who would love questing for rare books, etc. etc.

The griffin is a confident gambler and scavenger, always wanting to know what is in the next building, always getting where he shouldn't belong, who loves haggling and the thrill of a good deal or a big score, who has a knack for finding things other's can't, who will probably want to go questing for training in Pegasus advanced tricks, who will probably be doing some major questing for the perfect energy weapon (which the others might have to build, but the group overall will need examples). For example, there is probably some sort of rare stealth magical energy pistol somewhere, and some sort of SMG/automatic version of a recharger pistol somewhere, some sort of laser/magic pistol that is not plasma that is extra damaging and more likely to critical hit -- and schematics and spare parts and modifications for all of these. So eventually having the group make something like that would be in the group's best interest, because it would turn the griffin into a complete combat monster, which can keep them all alive (four short range automatic pistols on a highly custom battle saddle + lots of automatic ammo recharge + high crit chance + griffin perk to make a short range weapon long range + lots of shots + energy weapon specials = lots of dead enemies)

The Zebra is an exotic and seductive mare (with a barn door that swings both ways...), who can talk the group out of jams, who can interact and be social with entities that the rest of the group couldn't, who improves the cohesion of the rest of the group, who can make zebra-magic enhanced alchemical recipes that are otherwise impossible for the group to make, or do long-term enchanting of items, who knows how to use her hooves and can specialize in unarmed combat and throwing weapons. As such, the character would want to quest for a spirit or a group of spirits that can be bound to throwing weapons to make them safely return to her, either teleporting the weapons to her inventory or flying to her in a way where she won't get hit by the weapons -- and then she'd have to do something that such a group of spirits wants to get on good terms with them, most likely. She'd also quest for alchemy recipes, more training in her fighting style or challenges to improve her techniques (gaining perks by defeating ever more difficult enemies using her fighting style, for example), or for exotic ingredients for recipes, or for allies for the group, or whatever!

The changeling is very, very interesting, with wide open options for personality. Studious and a genius is a given, but surly due to the scarcity of her race, maybe? Cautious that only her friends/lovers (the PC's) must know her secret, as they are her adopted hive? Curious for new magics to learn? Loyal and caring due to her focus in supporting others and keeping them alive? Conflicted due to her natural instincts towards deception and lying for any she does not consider her hive, and how that conflicts with the ethics of the rest of the group? There's lots of possibilities. Mechanically, Changelings have an absolutely insane maximum strain -- if they can find friends or lovers that accept them, and ways (hematophage and tasty friends? those fangs have to count for something! Maybe some homebrew update to hematophage?) to refill that Strain. This makes them, other than a unicorn that focuses on a very narrow type of spells, the best caster; they are certainly the most versatile casters, with a spell that costs 20 AP rather than 45, no special talent or cutie mark to shoehorn them into only learning one type of magic, and the ability to get several magical abilities (like ichor, including a healing ichor that is a ranged healing method, and emotion sensing magic, and also the unique changeling spells).. making them versatility-focused mages par excellence. Further, with access to ichor that does the extremely, extremely rare (in this game) feat of battlefield control or suppressive fire that actually suppresses, and with their healing capabilities, they make perhaps the best support characters in the game. This character (assuming a variety of spell learning rules are in play, with the understanding that you shouldn't need to spend perks to get spells; there are several sets of rules that support this in various places) would be questing for friends or lovers (this might be the PC's, but also any cohorts of the group perhaps), as well as learning of various other spells and magic, as well as the remains of her race or a way for them to survive so they don't very soon go extinct, as changelings are very rare in the wastes. Further, since several of the spell learning rules require science/medicine/survival checks, this changeling is fantastic at those skills, and is the group scientist and computer/terminal and robot expert. This character would further benefit from learning forms and disguises that are innately useful and competent at certain tasks or useful for getting to places, and would be adventuring for that as well. As well, this character isn't incompetent at talking and making friends, and can sense emotions of others. Finally, with access to mundane healing, magical healing, and ichor healing (ranged! healing!), this character makes a superlative doctor and healer -- and can eventually start picking up perks to support cybernetics, should the other characters start wanting to do that.

Further, all these characters would work well together, mechanically and socially -- the earth pony and changeling could help the griffin in making the gear to support his unique fighting style, the griffin would help the group scavenge, the earth pony could help improving the equipment the group scavenges and cook great food to keep the group in top shape, the griffin could help selling the extra gear the group doesn't need, the changeling could help mitigate the earth pony's and zebra's mobility issues, the zebra could help the group when speaking and making allies is needed, the changeling could help the zebra know what she needs to know to do her job, the zebra can keep the group in alchemy and enchant the things that the earth pony makes... and there's even some interesting options for roleplay, with a little bit of implied sexual conflict between the probably more socially traditional earth pony and griffin, and the, ah, more free-wheeling behavior and, ah, needs of the zebra and changeling, that would be an interesting theme to roleplay. And the myriad implied backgrounds (hailing from a civilized part of the wastes for the earth pony vs always being an itinerant gambler and scavenger and merchant from a single parent who was the same for the griffin vs a tribal background for the zebra vs a dying hive for the changeling) that would lead to interesting roleplaying perspectives from whatever they cover.

What I'm getting at it is this: if you have been inspired by what I wrote here, you like GMing and maybe see where I am coming from with my ideas on what this game does well and doesn't do well and in my musings on the crunch and setting of the game, and you understand that a play by post game needs a firm 'the game must go on!' hand on the reins, and understand the timing thing with the 'whenever a few of us are together and have some time, we can just pick it up on skype or whatever' issue, and would like to run a game like this, please, please reply and talk to me about maybe doing this! And if you are a player who has been inspired by what I have said and would love to play in a game like this, and would like to take one of these character archetypes and tweak it and change it from the draft I made and make it uniquely your own (please! do!), please reply as well. Maybe we can set up an absolutely awesome sandbox game where the characters drive the story! Also, if someone likes the ideas of these rule tweaks, I can perhaps post some more detailed rule tweaks about any topic of interest to anyone. Or even if anyone wants to seriously discuss these ideas in general, without committing to being a player or a gm, I'd like to talk that too.

TL;DR: Looking for a game inspired by play by post ideas (ie, light on the 'set time to play'), have lots of ideas on the things the system is good or bad at, am fascinated by the rules of the different versions of the game, am looking for a gm who gets where I am coming from even if they don't agree on the particulars exactly -- I'm willing to have a lot of give on these topics, I just wanted to get them out, I am looking for other players who get where I am coming from, also if you don't want to read this whole thing or you are insulted by my ideas, why are you replying? I'm looking for people able to read and discuss things at length and in depth who I have at least some common ground with! I'm also looking for a game that either has playtime Sunday afternoon est, or is a forum-based play by post or Skype reply-as-you-will (pseudo-play-by-post) game.

hi hi

Different people are going to be looking for different things out of a game. Some people will enjoy an open world, others will stand around and wait for the GM to point them in the right direction, and complain that things aren't exciting enough. I don't think there is necessarily a right or wrong way to play, as long as people are having fun. Game masters and players both have to work together, unless it is one of those competitive games where they're trying to defeat each other.

But I have found that the only surefire way to get a game going is to GM it.

(If you already have a full cast of characters, you might consider writing a story too.)

Ice: unfortunately... I'm not reaaallly capable of GMing, for personal reasons that I would rather not get into. Regardless, I'd like to have some discussion on the particular points I mentioned?


Okay, if someone just wants to talk 'Rules' and 'The Metagame'. Note that I have been looking at several versions of the game; the core one, Mad_Modd's one, the Master one, and the Muny's rules, and my specific points are relevant to all of those, and possibly other rules sets besides. Here are my points:

1.) Fumbles are problematic; at the very least, they should be removed for SPECIAL attributes (1/10?) or add a second confirmation (roll a 10 and then roll above your effective attribute, or another 10 if you have a 10 in it, to confirm). There should also be SOME sort of method for skill fumbles to, in some scenarios, not mean anything and be a normal success if your skill is high enough, in other scenarios, be a simple failure specifically due to bad luck (ie, your skill was high enough to be above the fumble point but you were unlucky), be a failure due to difficult conditions or being inept, or be a critical and dramatic failure. There needs to be some nuance here, in a way more than 'have the GM figure it out themselves'.

2.) In order for characters to be considered 'competent' at their special skills, without dramatic overhauling of the skill system (like skill thresholds or the gm eyeballing 'you don't need to roll that, you have a skill 50, you're good enough to do it, that's half as good as anyone could possibly be', or something major like that), a pony generally needs to have a 75% in their skill, for a 3/4th's chance at succeeding at a normal difficulty roll. This has several major game implications. One, basically the game starts functioning where player characters are good at what they specialize in somewhere around or above level 10. Two, perhaps it is not the actual SKILL, but rather PERKS that support more exotic uses of a skill, or racial capabilities that give new uses of a skill, that makes a pony good at something; maybe this needs to be discussed. Three, perhaps the game should be much, much, much more free with both bonuses and penalties to a skill. This three is especially noticeable in d100 games that take this as a matter of course. IE, 'yea, your skill is only 35, but you are a trained professional that is competent at what you do, so if you intelligently set things up right and take your time and plan things out and get the right tools and the right help, you can get yourself a +60 to that roll, and probably succeed at it'. FFG's warhammer 40k games do this, and I think this game should do it too. Specifically, it should encourage GM's to give out bonuses and penalties like candy, rolling at the actual +0 skill should be downright RARE. Second, it should remove the +/-30 cap for all bonuses and penalties as a whole. Yes, it is there to stop munchkining to always succeed at a roll, but the game should actually be ENCOURAGING thoughtful planning if it is important to always succeed at a roll, as that should be a thing it is possible to do in general! Third, the magnitude of difficulty or ease of tasks should be changed quite a bit, for -60/-40/-20/0/20/40/60 for extremely hard/very hard/hard/normal/easy/very easy/extremely easy.

3.) A corollary to 2, it is 'access to useful perks and know-how independent of skill score' that give capabilities, by and large. So those should be able to be earned by adventuring in a way that is not XP-based, and also, since very powerful perks have requirements of 12 and above, the game should probably START at level 11, so ponies can get that 75 and a few roughly relevent perks to their cutie mark skills. Also, since the power increase via levels is generally linear and modest, the game should probably have 'jumps' of several levels at appropriate points.

4.) Another thing with perk access... is that if you start looking at the various different rulesets, there are patterns in the 'racial perks' that make some races and species able to do things that others can't. Since you aren't generally differentiating by potential raw skill, but instead by perk access, this is a GOOD thing that should be encouraged, as it makes for a more diverse gameplay experience. In my four character sheets in the post above, I took four races that seemed the most different, and focused on a 'build', as in a character's mechancical focus, that showed the capabilities of their race that other races can't do. More of these things need to be possible, and there needs to be more 'styles' that are particular to particular races. Earth Ponies need to be best by far at something more than building things better than others or non alchemical cooking, Griffins need to be better than anyone else at something other than luck-based scavenging and battle-saddle based bullet spam that is luck-focused and able to get effective ranges where others can, with some utility wing magic that is enough to do all the noncombat stuff pegasi can do, zebras are actually pretty good with the multi focus in alchemy, unarmed or melee weapon based martial arts, long term enchanting, interacting with spirits, and other tribal stuff, and there needs to be something more to differentiate the focus of a unicorn as the best extremely focused in their narrow specialty sorcerer and the changeling-unicorn focus as the best broadly focused wizard. What would be able to improve this? What would give Pegasi something to do better than others that is enough to be outside of a fight where they are flying?

5.) There needs to be major, major ways of getting mini perks (you get +10 to what you can carry! you get -3% discount on what you buy! NOT 'you get +# to skill', etc. etc.) without increasing your level, as in several interlocking systems. There already is a BIT of this, but it needs to be a core part of the system. There's the 'learning alchemy recipes', the 'learning spells', the 'getting merit badges via Achievements' from that one perk, the 'reading books', which should maybe give perks rather than skill points, there's the 'getting trained in pegasus tricks', there's 'learning cooking/brewing recipes', there's 'learning weapon and item recipes', etc. etc. etc. -- but these need to all be placed together in a system that makes more sense and isn't as ad-hoc as it currently is.

hi hi

It sounds like you are well on your way to making your own book of house rules.

I'm not terribly familiar with any of those rules, so I can't really say anything too specific, but I do enjoy game theory, so I'll give a crack at some of the meta-game stuff. You will simply have to forgive me for playing the devil's advocate in parts.

It is hard to reconcile the difference in granularity between 10 and 100 possible results. If 10 steps isn't enough, one could always multiply it by ten and use the standard ratios for figuring positive and negative criticals. On the other hand, as a storyteller, it is an important goal to make actions meaningful and interesting. Having a high chance of extreme results can force the characters into situations where they have to work to succeed.

The problem with bonuses and penalties to a roll is really a problem that any game with a flat distribution of results is going to face, whether it is a d100 or a d20. A +10 bonus for a character with a skill of 10, is increasing their chance of success by 200%, but a +10 bonus to a character with a skill of 50 is a mere 120%. Even if people don't realize it, they tend to expect a normal distribution of results, since those are so very common in real life. Bonuses and penalties near the extreme ends of the 100 point distribution can end up drastically altering the probabilities, when one would expect diminishing returns. From a thematic perspective, capping bonuses and penalties leaves the emphasis of narrative weight on the character, rather than the environment. (In the world of Warhammer 40k, it makes a lot of sense for the characters to be nothing but a mote, caught in an inescapable sea of chaos and inevitability.) And if bonuses and penalties from clever planning can stack the outcome below 0% or above 100%, would it perhaps make more sense to be using a resource management engine rather than a probability engine?

I think it was in one of Kkat's old posts on the Equestria Daily disqus thread, back when Fallout Equestria was still in progress, where in medias res was discussed. Starting in the middle of the action can certainly be a useful approach, and I would think that a GM could tailor the starting point of the character's stat progression to the starting point of the narrative.

The traditionalist in me still holds onto the value of classic structures, and I will relate an anecdote about that, which involves two characters each with a cybernetic arm. Character one started the game somewhere in the middle, they already had a fancy cybernetic arm, it was bought in character generation. It gave them some stats and some combat advantage, but it was never a very big deal. Character two started the game as a rookie, a relatively normal person who worked their way up. When they lost their arm in a fight and had to get a replacement, they never forgot it, never forgave the person who took it from them. It became a burning reminder of their personal failure and motivated their actions afterwards. (Certainly, the intended length of the campaign can play a big part in the pacing of character growth.)

Re. SPECIAL rolls: Most of the games I've been in, I've pushed for (and usually gotten) a house rule—SPECIAL rolls are "Stat x 10 vs. d100" instead of the original "Stat vs. d10". Crit-success and crit-fail are calculated based on LCK just like a skill roll.

I also came up with my own rules for getting skills above 100 back before the core rule doc had anything for that, but it's kinda outdated now.

I don't think we are quiiiite looking at this from the same angle
IMO, A game system should:
1.) Be fun
2.) Evoke the setting and gamestyle and type of stories it is trying to show
3.) Be easy enough to actually play at a table
4.) Not have jarring things that break verisimilitude and suspension of disbelief

My issue is with number four. Several things in the system (lack of push for GM's to give bonuses or penalties, the fumble system for the special ability scores and the skills, the low amount of bonuses and penalties allowed when they are actually given, lack of a skill threshold system, lack of some sort of resource management for rerolls or auto successes, how common fumbles are in general, etc. etc.) cause an abrupt, jarring stop to anyone who is actually paying attention. Things like, "Wait a minute. This is a well maintained, well-constructed gun, and I am meticulously cleaning the old ammunition of gunk every night that I manually reload the clips. It shouldn't jam once every twenty shots! =I should be able to spend all day firing the thing at a firing range, with maybe only one or two jams out of hundreds of rounds!" or "Wait a minute, this person is half as good at being a doctor as anyone can ever be. And giving someone a physical is just listening to them talk about symptoms, taking their blood pressure, looking in their ears for redness, looking in their throat for redness, listening to their breathing for obvious obstructions... there isn't even any luck involved in those tasks! They are completely routine! There's no way he could have failed at any of them in this well lit room with the ability to take his time!" And even, "Okay, yea, I get that this game isn't reality. But in the actual games and stories this game is trying to evoke, people don't actually fail at things they are supposed to be good at near as often as this game is having me do, nor do they fail as spectacularly as my character is failing!"

You could say, 'you should only be rolling when there is a chance of dramatic, relevant failure that your character could actually fail', and to that, I say, 'Well, duh, but lots of GMs won't do that without the system actually explaining to them it's limitations and giving them guidelines to do so, because these problems are not obvious! Further, the rules as they exist actually encourage the opposite behavior of the GM's, which causes an endemic issue of a comedy of errors in this game. That's why I am talking about these issues, there needs to be some sort of mention of them and a way of handling them in the system itself!'

Basically, my issue isn't what the distribution is, the issue is, 'how likely should a character of this skill be to succeed at this task under these circumstances'? And those numbers should sometimes, in some situations, actually be '100%'. If you have the best tools and are doing a completely routine task for which there is no chance of failure and you are a trained professional in an appropriate environment, and the task is one you could do in your sleep, you should actually have a 100% chance of succeeding at the task. Which this system absolutely fails to show.

Consider a D20, roll over a skill difficulty, game with no fumbles in the skill system, and simple tasks are of difficulty class (ie, roll a d20 plus modifiers against a set difficulty) of 10 or 15 or so. Consider a character with a +14 modifier to the skill in question. They should have a 100% chance to succeed at those simple tasks, and it is only more advanced, difficult tasks that challenge them, or mitigating circumstances (such as doing the normally simple task under various stressors that effectively increase the difficulty above that point) that would give them a chance of failure. And then realize that a lot of D20 games have something like 'take 10' rules where you can just set the die roll to a 10 in any circumstance that isn't highly stressful, like actually being in combat, with 'if you fail you die' being specifically not considered a sufficiently stressful situation. And how that rule is mentioned for how expert climbers don't actually fall to their deaths 5% of the time they spend climbing difficult mountains. This game, as it exists, does not actually allow for this possibility of happening, and because of that, it often fails to evoke the level of competence of the characters shown in the stories.


Also, my issue isn't that the game should start with the characters having an adventure or two under their belts... my issue is that a blank starting character should perhaps be level 11, even with complete starting gear and starting situations, even with absolutely no quests or quest perks or anything like that under their belt, because that is simply where the game's math actually begins to function relatively properly and predictably.

hi hi

It is sort of begging the question to say that "how likely should a character of this skill be to succeed at this task under these circumstances," is not the distribution. Since distribution is literally: "Distribution assigns a probability to each measurable subset of the possible outcomes." Success or failure being measurable subsets of possible outcomes.

In clean hospitals with certified doctors and equipment, about 6% of all medicare patients in a year will experience an avoidable, adverse event, from medical error.

A Rocky Mountain Rescue Group Study, from 1998 to 2011, showed that 5.5% of all climbing accidents resulted in fatalities. The National Center for Health Statistics, reports that 1 in 1750 people die in mountain climbing annually. If those statistics are comparable, and my math is right, then just over 1 percent of climbers annually have a climbing accident. And that is with 90% of climbers making routine climbs. Also, given the number of accidents involving climbing without a rope or inadequate equipment, [url=http://www.stephabegg.com/home/projects/accidentstats]about 46%[url], it is not unreasonable to assume that more mistakes happen that do not become accidents due to safety equipment.

(Experienced climbers going above 6000m in the Himalayas have a 10 to 12.6% fatality risk. Kangchenjunga alone has a 22% fatality rate.)

I suppose that was me mis-remembering the definition of distribution in this context. And that medicare group mentioned 'These include mistakes such as surgical errors or sometimes unavoidable problems such as an infection spread in the hospital, or patients having their blood sugar fall to unusually low levels.'

I would say that, no matter your skill level, actual, genuine, invasive surgery is something you have to roll for, because that thing is something that even the best people can ALWAYS fail at doing. But that doesn't mean that there aren't medical tasks that shouldn't be rolled for if someone with a certain threshold of skill and experience happens to be the one performing them. And that is 1% of all of those climbers, annually, with how many climb checks in a year (so how many climb checks do you make in a day full of climbing, then? at least 5?), and many go a year with no accident, and only some get an accident? The FOE rules are making accidents several orders of magnitude worse; if climbing was like the FOE rules, the percentage of climbers that have an accident per year would be about 100%.

Nor are there a lack of tasks related to climbing that must always be rolled every single time someone with large amount of skill and equipment performs them; there should be some tasks, in a given sort of skill, that some people will have a 100% chance of succeeding at, under some circumstances. I simply state that these things should exist, and the system should let them exist, and the fact that it doesn't (everyone ALWAYS has at least a 1% chance to fail at anything they ever choose to do, ever) causes a serious, dramatic problem.

hi hi

An estimated 13.5 percent of hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries experienced adverse events during their hospital stays," the OIG said in the report, available here It said 44 percent of the problems were avoidable.

44 percent of 13.5 is about 6 percent. (51 percent was unavoidable, and the rest was unclear.) It also says: "Events related to surgery or procedures were less likely to be preventable than other types of events, such as hospital-acquired infections." So actually, invasive surgery involved fewer instances of malpractice.

In my experience, the only things that are usually 100% reliable are the physical laws of nature, like the conservation of momentum, and even that isn't really confirmed 100%, just close enough to not be worth splitting hairs over. People are usually much less reliable. People will often run into problems just walking. They stumble on stairs, they stub their toes, they hit their heads on the cupboard they just left open a second ago.

Perhaps what actions need is a danger level, which sets the amount of harm that can happen in the event of a failure.

Yes, and the percentage of that thing that happens every time someone makes an attempt at doing that is maybe 1/100,000, rather than 1/100, and certainly not 5/100. Let's say every 10 minutes you spend walking is, hypothetically, a single walk check? It's a numbers game; I'm not saying that there aren't hospital accidents and there aren't times that people stumble, but I am talking about the chance per attempt made, and you are talking about (in general) the percentage of people in a year that happen to have a mishap after making several or a large number of attempts.

Think of it this way.

Various different methods of birth control have a failure rate.
This is described as the number of people per 100 that, in a year of using that form of birth control, get pregnant.
That is DECIDEDLY NOT the percentage chance, per act, that such a form of birth control would prevent a pregnancy (succeed) or allow a pregnancy to happen (fail).

You are equating two things that are not comparable: the chance of someone having some noticeable problem in a year of doing tasks, and the chance of, per attempt at a task, the person to fail at doing the task.

The FOE system sets the chance of absolutely abysmal failure, per attempt at a single skill, of at very least 1/100 per single attempt at using the skill, or more likely, 5/100 per attempt at using the skill, and for most so-called 'experts' in a skill (let's call them skill 50, level three or four, with good stats and a perk or two that supports the functioning of that skill), if they are doing the easiest task possible with that skill (so +30), have a 20/100 chance of failing to use that skill at all, either a normal or an extreme failure, and most likely have a 5/100 chance of abysmally failing to use that skill, each time they attempt to do the simplest task of that skill.

See the issue?


But, anyway, this isn't REALLY the topic I want to talk most about. What I'd prefer to talk more about, if you don't have any suggestions on fixes for this (cause it IS a problem, I find it a bit odd that you seem to be claiming it isn't a problem...? Guns don't jam every 20 shots...?), is one of the other things;

Like what do you think on what I came up with for the four top archetypes the system seems to support?
What other 'protected (like with racial traits and perks and abilities)' archetypes do you see?
What perks SHOULD be shunted to be racial perks, to offer more archetype protection?
What other perks or types of perks should be added, to give options for more race/species niche differentiation?
What should each race be, by far, best at? How should the game support that?
Or your thoughts on the whole suggested start level, and the bumping up several levels at rare, major event-based levelups, or my idea of uniting the various 'learn mini-perks' system to be a core and more cohesive part of the game.