RPG Soapbox

Has anyone tried this system? If so, I'd love your opinions. I've several friends who really like it and told me to check it out, and what little I've read excites me, particularly as an alternative to White Wolf in terms of a supernatural/paranormal/horror genre RPG. (Ironically enough, I've been working on a percentile-based mechanics system for a couple of years now, and so there was one of those "Oi vey" moments when I recently checked out UA and found their system was percentile-based as well.

Percentile based systems offer a couple of severe problems.

#1.) The average skill level median on a percentile system is going to be 50%. That's a lot of points to preassign or whatever. Massive bookkeeping prior to game play is one of the reasons I migrated away from Traveler in the late 80's. While I loved the game and system I didn't like the fact that you had to do massive amounts of work to 'progress' a character you hadn't even gotten to play yet. (Nevermind the fact that you could die during character creation. Funny but annoying- even more so after the third training fatality in a row.)

#2.) Starting as average in skills means that progression becomes one of two things-

A.) Grinding and tedious- gaining a point or two per pop means that it's going to take forever to get anywhere. This reduces the inclination to stick it out, since real time years will pass before you're done

-or-

B.) Absurdly quick- gaining a cool 10 or so points per pop means you're going to max out in no time. This takes away from the long view, since you become epic in just a few weeks of playing.

I haven't found a D% based system that manages to hit the middle ground.

It'd be nice to get away from that sort of progression entirely, to be frank. I'd love to see a game system that rewards skill use with skill advancement. That is, something like Improvement Points that translate to an increase in a skill as you use it, with certain milestones that provide the baseline for points (Something like each successful use of the skill gives 1 IP, each critical success/failure gives 2 IP, 10X the level of the skill is an automatic upgrade) coupled with an actual experience point system to represent the more nebulous aspects of growth and maturity to be used on abilities and non utilized skills (basically to represent 'extracurricular' learning).

*runs off on a tangent*

http://www.atlas-games.com/unknownarmies/

For those curious about the system.

Oh boy, Cosmic Bumfights!

Didn't this one suffer about as much as Nobilis?

I'm honestly a little baffled by your criticisms, HB.



If a player looks at the scale provided and sees that (as an example) 20% strength is the average for an adult human, they can quickly decide at least fairly accurately how strong they want their character to be. It's not as though each and every individual point is going to be assigned one by one. You're going to do most of it in chunks, not point by point - that's not massive bookkeeping.




This is no different than ANY gaming system out there. How slowly/quickly progression occurs is based on two things, the primary one being the GM and how little/much xp they assign. The second one being how much xp it takes to improve something.