Tag: Skills

Language and Language Skill

Today’s post isn’t a rule change or new class. Instead it’s just my brief thoughts on a particular aspect of role playing games.

In my getting-near 30 years of gaming, something that has always fascinated me in RPGs is language.

For me, language (including literacy) is a big part of what I think of when I think about good role playing.

In the real world, there are hundreds of current languages, and thousands of dead languages. There are codes and cyphers that act as languages. There are fictional languages. Language is everywhere and without it, we wouldn’t be able to effectively communicate. We’d still be living under rocks and grunting at each other.

So using language in a game is not only a great thing to do, but I think increases the enjoyability of the game. Language adds tension, adds background flavor, adds complications, can escalate or de-escalate conflict.

Some games deal with language by not dealing with it; everyone can understand each other. Either by default or because of babelfish or universal translators or whatever. It’s an uninteresting cop-out.

Other games provide a “common” language, with other languages existing in the world to a lesser degree. Many of these games provide a set number of languages a character “knows” from the begining of the game. Or a maximum number of languages a character can know in their lifetime.

So when they roll up their character, and have Common and 4 other languages to fill in, what do they do? Scratch in Elvish, Dwarvish, Goblin might come in handy, and uh… whatever demons speak.

The problem with this is A) why the hell does your first level fighter know the language of demons, and B) If you never have an opportunity to speak with demons, or elves, or dwarves, or goblins, you wasted those language slots.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess utilizes a skill mechanic for languages that fits my needs as a GM and my wants as a player. Namely, simplicity.

In LotFP, Language, as with all skills, are rated on a scale of 1 to 6, with success determined by rolling under the value with a d6. Intelligence modifiers add to your skill score. So a INT mod of +1 would add 1 to your skill, making your Language skill 2 in 6. Got it?

With the Language skill in LotFP, you start play speaking whatever language you want, although speaking the dominant language of wherever you are is a good idea. There isn’t a list of additional languages. You don’t start play with additional languages. Instead, whenever your character encounters another language, whether it be from the foreign trader, the ancient religious text, or the kingdom next door, you roll your language skill. If successful, you know the language and can utilize it from then on. If you fail, you don’t know the language.

That’s it.

It’s quick, it’s simple, it’s intuitive, and it doesn’t tie anyone’s hands with poor decisions at character creation.

And it can be used in most other games with little modification.

That’s it. Go read something else now.

Skills and Saving Throws

I’m always trying to think of ways to streamline and simplify rules and mechanics. Well, that’s not really true, usually I’m trying to think of something else (Should gorilla-men who live in treehouses and dump their waste to the forest floor have any special immunities or bonuses to save against the spores and disease of the fungus-people who collect the waste?) and then I get on a mental tangent and spend the rest of the day wondering why only Thieves have skills and why they are use a percentage die system while every other dice mechanic in the damn game is a d6 or d20.

More systems means more complication and more distractions during the game as players stop and ask which die they roll for a particular thing, and I find that terribly annoying. On the other hand, using a single die or mechanic for every single thing is boring and usually ends up with dice pools and all the bullshit and headaches that entails.

I like to keep it simple, yet interesting.

So I was thinking about the Prime attribute system in Castles and Crusades. It was created to simplify saving throws and skills by making them attribute checks. A Prime atribute means you have to roll 12 or better, a Secondary attribute means you have to roll an 18 or better. The GM also has modifiers (difficulty levels) that they can throw at your roll but that’s the gist of it.

The problem is that I’ve run Castles and Crusades before, and the players were constantly confused as to which attribute was prime and what they roll and what their bonus was and… the campaign fizzled. I thought maybe it was my fault, I didn’t explain the system well enough… blaming myself, really.

It wasn’t me though. The SIEGE system (what C&C calls their mechanic) is cluncky and weird and doesn’t work all that well when you look at it closely.

Sure, some skill might be under one of your Prime attributes, but since you’re the wrong class, you don’t get to add your level to it. Or, you are the right class, but you don’t have the right Prime attribute so you suck at something you should be good at. And why does every system want to front-load badassness into every character at 1st level? I remember back in the day all these hipster scumbags shitting on Rifts for front-loading characters and now every game does it. First level characters should be shit, and they should become slightly less shit as they gain experience.

Especially if you aren’t playing a superhero RPG.

When is someone going to publish a perfect system that I won’t have to rewrite?

Anyway… here is Saves and Skills

I believe characters should be built over time, hence the entire point of experience points and levels. Some games and players don’t use xp or levels. This isn’t for you.

Saving throws

Basically the same as C&C, but the terminology is removed because it is unnecesary.

To save, roll 18 or higher on a d20. Include all applicable modifiers. The GM (me) can add modifiers to indicate the difficulty of the situation. For example, the HD of a spellcaster is added to the dificulty of any saves against that spellcaster’s magic. Or an invisible trap will be harder to detect than an obvious hole in the ground.

If your character is a…

  • Warrior: You get +6 to Strength based saves
  • Magic User: You get +6 to either Intelligence or Wisdom saves (Player’s choice)
  • Specialist: You get +6 to Dexterity based saves

 All characters get to choose two other attributes. The saves from each of these attributes have a bonus of +3.

Every level your character goes up, you get a +1 to ALL saves.

Skills

Skills doesn’t just mean the special skills of the specialist. Skills are pretty much anything not covered by a saving throw. For that reason, I’m not including a skill list.

To successfully roll a skill, you have to roll an 18 or higher on a d20.

Warriors and Magic Users focus on fighting and magic. Therefore they are not as adept at things not involving those two things.

  • Warriors and Magic Users add attribute modifiers to applicable skills.
  • This gives Warriors and Magic Users a 10% chance of success at first level, not including attribute bonuses.
  • Warriors and Magic Users have the possibility of selecting a “Class Skill,” which gives a particular skill the bonus of +1 per level of the character.

Specialists are all about skills. That’s the strength of the class!

  • Specialists receive a +3 to all skills, in addition to applicable attribute modifiers
  • Specialists receive a bonus of +1 per level of the character to all skills.
  • This gives the Specialist a 25% chance of success at first level, not including attribute bonuses.

Special note about Languages

  • Regardless of class, the Intelligence modifier indicates how many languages the character can speak and read, in addition to their native language. 
  • There is no maximum number of Languages a character can know. 
  • The Language skill is used to determine if the character knows a particular language when it is encountered for the first time. It is rolled as any other skill.