I’ve been struggling with a roleplaying-gaming design issue. It’s probably just my own pet-hate. It’s something I call the “Big Pile of Skills” problem.
When creating a roleplaying character, there is nearly always a section on “Skills”. Most of the time you can choose any Skill you like and invest points into them. Some systems have some concept of grouping Skills like D&D’s Class system and Riddle of Steel’s Skill Packets. But most of the modern day systems I’ve played just let you pick any skills you like. I’m under the impression that most players considered this a good thing and limiting character choices to a select set of groups is considered Badtm.
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An Example Fudge Implementation of “Combat Profiles”
If you don’t have time to read all this, then check out the cut-down version v0.1.1!
What started as some rough ideas and thoughts on the combat experience in roleplaying games, developed in a kind of simplistic theory I called “Combat Profiles”. After some discussion, I put together this system as an example of using these concepts. In fact, putting together this system has helped me scope and define the ideas into something more tangible, but that’s for another day. This system priorities player-experience over strategy or realism but doesn’t try to exclude anything either. I don’t know if it delivers, as I haven’t tested it yet.
It uses Fudge and Story Elements, as I believe they are uniquely suited to “Combat Profiles” compared to the other systems I’ve played (of course I haven’t played every system out there). It is task-based (i.e. not “conflict resolution”), another of my biases I guess. However I believe the general principals can be applied to other systems. It’s geared as a system that can be applied to all settings and all combat situations. The system attempts to define what combat is to understand how to apply it.
This system is in part inspired by the Shadow of Yesterday RPG, Riddle of Steel RPG, Spirit of the Century RPG, Fate System, several Fudge Factor articles and the FudgeList. If you are familiar with these sources, their influence should be obvious.
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