Winter Wolves - Planet Stronghold 2

jack1974 Dec 14, 2013

While Anima is in charge of doing the battle rules, I am in charge of the non-combat skills :mrgreen:

Anima suggested a good way to handle them, instead of "skill check with a percentage of success" like was the first game, it will be different. There is still the skill check, but is a value you must match otherwise fail. However, you have a finite resource to temporarily increase the skills of any characters (have to work out in the plot exactly what it is, some sort of super energy) during missions.

So it's up to you to choose in which skill check you'll use that "boost". Obviously, it will not be enough to "skip" all the checks, and it will depend on the difference between the required skill value.

Example:

Mission A, there's a Medicine skill check of value 10. Your best character has Medicine 10 = you pass it.

Mission B, there's a Medicine skill check of value 10. Your best character has Medicine 5 = you'll always fail that option, unless you "buy" the difference, subtracting it from the finite resource pool. That value will change based on difficulty level.

Of course like in the first game, for each situation there'll be at least two choices, if not more.

Now about the real question, I want to narrow the skills into 8 non-combat skills. Doing more would be too much, since even in this list there are already some skills that could be similar for certain situation (like lockpicking, could be either sabotage or science even if this last one would involve more hacking than lockpicking). I have this list:

1.Physical (jumping high, resisting impact, etc)

2.Survival (like finding food in a inhospitable environment, scouting, etc)

3. ??? (was Psionics, but I'm looking for another skill)

4.Charisma (leadership abilities, convince others of your ideas)

5.Science (hacking a terminal, fixing a device, etc)

6.Medicine (healing someone, human/alien anatomy knowledge, etc)

7.Sabotage (both using explosives, or stealth to infiltrate)

8.ESP (empathy, sixth sense)

the one I am not sure/I don't like is Psionics since is too vague (they could be used for anything, like healing or hurting enemies). Was wondering if you have any suggestions

Lockpicking would fail under either Sabotage or Science.

Miakoda Dec 14, 2013

What are you looking for with Psionics? After all, ESP can be considered a subset of Psionics (Extra-Sensory Perception after all, which includes Clairovoyance, is considered Psionic). If you are looking at it for physical manipulation, then there are the 'kinetic' powers like Telekinesis, etc.

For what it seems like you are looking for, Sabotage almost sounds like a 'Rogue' classification. Rogue could include lock-picking, stealth, etc.

However, if you are going in context of a modern setting, hacking a computer controlled door would fall under science, while physically bashing a door seems more like Physical.

And if you are going to use explosives, I think the term Demolitions may sound better (and could theoretically fit under Science)

jack1974 Dec 14, 2013

No I'm looking for another skill that could be useful in various situation, not necessarily related to Psionics. Sorry wrote it badly :lol:

Miakoda Dec 14, 2013

No I'm looking for another skill that could be useful in various situation, not necessarily related to Psionics. Sorry wrote it badly

Is there anything in particular you are looking at? This could help narrow it down.

Also, if you use the term scouting, you may occasionally wish to drop 'reconnaissance' in there as well. Good military sounding synonym.

jack1974 Dec 14, 2013

Well in practice a skill that could be useful in some situation/missions, but that can't be included in the other existing ones.

I guess survival is different enough from scouting/reconnaissance though... I'll see if there are other suggestions

jack1974 Dec 14, 2013

Ah maybe I had a good idea, could be Lore / Alien Lore. Having a good knowledge of the alien culture could be useful in many non-combat situation, and is a skill different from others (Science is more about how things works than culture).

Miakoda Dec 14, 2013

Well in practice a skill that could be useful in some situation/missions, but that can't be included in the other existing ones.

I guess survival is different enough from scouting/reconnaissance though... I'll see if there are other suggestions

Survival is a fair enough cover skill. I only meant if you search want other terms to include for later writing, recon is a good choice.

(And there is a group called Force Recon, and they are taught much of the same knowledge. This isn't a suggestion of a name change, just a confirmation

).

Lore/Alien Lore can be a good skill. It could include alien biology, as well as history, language, etc. If you use alien in it, one could use Xenology...study of alien things

jack1974 Dec 14, 2013

Yes I'm going to use that, just generic Culture (or Lore) since also relates to things the character knows about the human colony. This is cool because for example you could remember that a particular model of robot had a specific weakness, and this is not related to science but to something you learned or studied. So yes I'm going with this ! false alarm, missing skill found! :lol:

Jaeger Dec 14, 2013

For Psionics, possibly erect protective barriers, disrupt the minds of enemies, create illusions, etc.

Lockpicking is something that involves fine motor skills than athletics or brute force, so falling under Sabotage or Science is fine with me. Forcibly breaking a lock or door can fall under Physical.

jack1974 Dec 14, 2013

Ah no no sorry, I have removed Psionics from the list, since is too generic and could be considered a sort of "deus ex machina"

Will be replaced by Lore / Culture (possibly the equivalent of Wisdom in a fantasy RPG!).

I agree on your division of Lockpicking and breaking a lock/door under Physical, that was my plan too.

ShaunPWelch Dec 14, 2013

I mentioned it in e-mail already, but I really like this idea of comparison tests instead of a percentage roll. I don't think there is any need to justify, story-wise, the extra points you can spend. It's easy enough to gloss them over as "extra effort" to a player. Sometimes you can push yourself to do better, but it makes you tired (so limited points)!

Also, just a thought, but this is The Future, so most doors will probably be keycoded and made out of material you can't just bash in with your shoulder. So physical skill may not matter too much for that.

jack1974 Dec 14, 2013

Yes the effort thing should be good enough

As for the doors, yes the human built one for sure, but maybe some alien races still have "old fashioned way" doors :lol:

but I agree, most doors will be the futuristic sliding-door ones!

Falaris Dec 18, 2013

While Anima is in charge of doing the battle rules, I am in charge of the non-combat skills

Now about the real question, I want to narrow the skills into 8 non-combat skills. Doing more would be too much, since even in this list there are already some skills that could be similar for certain situation (like lockpicking, could be either sabotage or science even if this last one would involve more hacking than lockpicking). I have this list:

1.Physical (jumping high, resisting impact, etc)

2.Survival (like finding food in a inhospitable environment, scouting, etc)

3. ??? (was Psionics, but I'm looking for another skill)

4.Charisma (leadership abilities, convince others of your ideas)

5.Science (hacking a terminal, fixing a device, etc)

6.Medicine (healing someone, human/alien anatomy knowledge, etc)

7.Sabotage (both using explosives, or stealth to infiltrate)

8.ESP (empathy, sixth sense)

Hm.

The 'skill boost' could be an aspect of leadership - getting the most out of your team, basically. Have stress be part of the stats (PTSD or similar), which would also be a good reason to leave some troops in the base at times, and make using the skill boost add to a team member's stress. (In another post you mentioned wanting to differentiate between members in team and out of team, this could be an aspect of that.).

Physical. This sounds a bit odd to me - physical isn't a skill, athletics is a skill.

Survival, Sabotage, Science, Medicine. This is a bit muddled, I think. Survival skills include first aid, normally. But that's also medicine. Sneaky is in both survival and sabotage. Bomb disposal or bomb manufacture would easily fit in science even when sabotage is the specific skill for it. I can't help think this could do with a bit of rephrasing or redefining. I also feel mechanic is missing.

Psychic, ESP, Charisma. Psychic has allready been discussed, but in some RPG's the skill 'Insight' is used, as a sort of 'how good you are at reading people' skill combined with social awareness. ESP and Charisma.. those works fine.

About survival, if you want to make it less vague, another term you could use could be Fieldcraft. It would help a bit on separating it from sabotage and medicine, if that is an advantage.

About sabotage, tradecraft could be an alternative. (A catch-all for all sorts of covert, spyish stuff including encryption, lockpicking etc, but it is a bit Tom Clancy.

(Doing things subtly while seen = tradecraft, not being seen = fieldcraft, for a distinction on which wold be used for what sort of stealthy bits).

I would consider doing away with science, psychic/lore and ESP and turn it into Academics (The theoretical aspects of science + lore), Mechanics (The mechanical aspects of science + the parts of sabotage and survival that would be applicable), and Insight or Empathy (ESP + 'people reading' + social awareness).

I do not mean that you should take all these suggestions to heart and scrap what you have - that would be rather presumptous of me, because what you have works, and you've probably given it more thought than I. If you did, the skill list would be like this:

Athletics

Fieldcraft

Tradecraft

Academic

Mechanic

Empathy (Or insight)

Charisma

Medicine

I feel like the boundaries between the skills are clearer with this set, but I do not know if you then suddenly end up with skill checks you want to do that has no applicable skill anymore.

Another thing that would heavily influence this division is the amount of skill checks there would be on each skill. If you suddenly end up using science for 1/3 of the skill checks in the game, it really needs splitting up, for instance. May be interesting to run a bit of statistics on that and see if anything pops up suspiciously often or rarely, because that would probably be a good indication that a little restructuring might be necessary.

Regards,

Me

jack1974 Dec 18, 2013

Thanks for the suggestion

Yes it's not always easy to come up with *really unique* skills. I agree that survival might also mean first aid, and that science and medicine are similar too. Ultimately is just a game so need to take some decisions even if maybe they're not 100% accurate/right.

I could replace physical with Athletics since sounds better.

The system was allowing skills and specializations, so we could had:

Science with specialization in: Medicine, Engineering, etc

But while was cool, was too big scope for this game (I can't include 150 different skill checks!).

So far I have: Athletics Survival Culture Charisma Science Medicine Sabotage ESP

But since in the game there are 3 missions each faction in the first two chapters, and each mission allows you to use 2 non-combat skills, for the sake of balancing and to reduce the skills from 8 to 6, I might group Survival on Sabotage (since I was using it for scouting, hunting, etc) and maybe group Culture & Charisma under Leadership (even if they ARE different: you could be a good charismatic leader but not know about the alien races/lore). The most similar would be Science and Medicine I guess, even if Medicine was used to determine the amount of HP healed with first aid kits, I guess that the value could be influenced by Science now.

Anyway about the balancing don't worry, I keep a spreadsheet with each skill usage in the whole game to make sure that they are all used in the same amount, so there can't be a skill more used and another almost never used

nullzero Dec 19, 2013

The system was allowing skills and specializations, so we could had:

Science with specialization in: Medicine, Engineering, etc

ohhh! brilliant lots and lots of skills, but then...

But while was cool, was too big scope for this game (I can't include 150 different skill checks!).

... Oh well... But yes, a more limited skill list is probably better for this game. At least if we want to use a skill more than one or two times to be relevant.

So far I have: Athletics Survival Culture Charisma Science Medicine Sabotage ESP

But since in the game there are 3 missions each faction in the first two chapters, and each mission allows you to use 2 non-combat skills, for the sake of balancing and to reduce the skills from 8 to 6, I might group Survival on Sabotage (since I was using it for scouting, hunting, etc) and maybe group Culture & Charisma under Leadership (even if they ARE different: you could be a good charismatic leader but not know about the alien races/lore). The most similar would be Science and Medicine I guess, even if Medicine was used to determine the amount of HP healed with first aid kits, I guess that the value could be influenced by Science now.

I like the idea of grouping Culture, Charisma, Leadership into one.

nullzero Dec 19, 2013

Survival, Sabotage, Science, Medicine. This is a bit muddled, I think. Survival skills include first aid, normally. But that's also medicine. Sneaky is in both survival and sabotage. Bomb disposal or bomb manufacture would easily fit in science even when sabotage is the specific skill for it. I can't help think this could do with a bit of rephrasing or redefining. I also feel mechanic is missing.

I also think the distinction between this skills is a bit fuzzy.

About survival, if you want to make it less vague, another term you could use could be Fieldcraft. It would help a bit on separating it from sabotage and medicine, if that is an advantage.

About sabotage, tradecraft could be an alternative. (A catch-all for all sorts of covert, spyish stuff including encryption, lockpicking etc, but it is a bit Tom Clancy.

(Doing things subtly while seen = tradecraft, not being seen = fieldcraft, for a distinction on which wold be used for what sort of stealthy bits).

If instead of survival it was named "scouting" it would also include stealth, the survive in the wilderness but not the medical bonus. And then Sabotage could be more explosions/mechanics/hacking without stealth.

jack1974 Dec 19, 2013

If instead of survival it was named "scouting" it would also include stealth, the survive in the wilderness but not the medical bonus. And then Sabotage could be more explosions/mechanics/hacking without stealth.

Yes that's how I consider them for this game. I think as long as I write clearly in the skills description the definition should be OK

jack1974 Dec 20, 2013

All right! After so much brainstorming, thanks to a last-minute suggestion by Anima I managed to make the final list. I wanted 8 skills because each NPC will start with a good knowledge of a specific skill (you can always customize them later of course, but is cool to give them more personality from the start).

[code]1	Rumi	ESP

2	Damien	Sabotage

3	Tom	Piloting

4	Philipp	Scouting

5	Rebecca	Athletics

6	Michelle	Charisma

7	Jacob	Science

8	Milo	Culture

[/code]

so Anima's suggestion was vehicle driving, which after some twitter consultation I changed into Piloting (that works for both normal and flying vehicles). Obviously TOM SHATZ is your man for that!!

Then I changed Survival into Scouting as suggested, and also merged Medicine under Science (wasn't making much sense to have them separated). Now is all good to resume writing more missions. 7 finished so far

nullzero Dec 20, 2013

sounds good! Looking forward to see the piloting part.

DunKalar Dec 20, 2013

Michelle <3

best charakter so far ... after chamby ]:->