Thursday, May 18, 2006
Wooden Swords and Battle Scars
(Original date of writing: 03/12/04)
This essay can be considered a add-on to the Dual Track Advancement System essay. It’s probably a good idea to read that essay before this one, if you haven't already.
Knowledge and Skill Overview:
A quick recap of some of the concepts from the other essay. In the Dual Track System, advancement is broken into two areas. Skill, which improves through use. And Knowledge, which are abilities, spells, et cetera that are can be obtained in many different ways. With this essay, I want to take a closer look of one aspect of the system: the nature of training vs. actual experience.
Training vs. Experience:
Imagine if a teenager had been taking karate classes for a couple years. In the teenager’s neighborhood, local small time criminals have been causing trouble in the community. Should we send the teenager alone to confront the criminals in order to teach them a lesson and drive them out of the neighborhood? Before making a decision, most people would probably want some more information. How big and strong is the young man? Is his karate teacher well known? Are the karate classes challenging, or does the school promote everyone to black belt regardless of skill? Does the school focus on sparring primarily or technique and forms instead?
Or maybe you might want to know something about the neighborhood thugs. How many are there? Are they armed? With what? Have the thugs assaulted or injured anyone or do they just cause general mischief?
Lots of factors to consider. Now, how about we take the teenager out of the picture. Instead, we want to send Big Anthony to deal with the thugs. Tony, just pushing 45 years of age, is still a large imposing figure. Presently, he is the owner of a local warehouse. But for many years, he himself was a local hooligan not unlike our group of thugs. Tony has been through many dangerous street fights and now is dedicated to keeping the streets of his old neighborhood free from criminals. Would you rather send Big Anthony to deal with the thugs over the teenager? Why?
The capability of a person’s skill comes from a combination of their training and experience. Most people don’t pick the teenager as their champion, because they don’t know how much actual real fight experience he has had. The teenager is skilled, but most would rather bet on Tony’s combination of fighting skill and his fighting experience.
What if the group of thugs weren’t so small time? Instead they were seasoned killers armed with guns. Or instead of a group of thugs, it’s a pack of wild wolves. Or a crack U.S. Army Commando team. Or a lone black bear. In any of those situations, would you pick the teenager or Tony to do the fighting? You’d probably search for someone who has had the correct training and experience to successfully deal with the situation.
A character trained to do something has a certain amount of power and credibility. Likewise, so does someone with a lot of experience. The best characters; however, have a combination of training and a high amount of experience. This is part of the dynamic nature of the Dual Track Advancement System. It’s possible to create many different types of characters, each with a unique set of skills, knowledge, training, and experience.
Specialized Experience:
Recall from the other essay that all forms of knowledge are themselves skills. A fighter that learns a new kick from a trainer has gained the ability to use that new kick. However, the more he uses that kick, the better he becomes at using that specific kick. Likewise, the more he uses any kick, improves his overall kicking ability.
The same went for the alchemist who learned the healing potion. Or the mage who used his fire shard spell improved his fire shard ability, his ability with fire magic, and his skill at using magic in all its forms. All this from just practicing with the fire shard spell.
Now for a truly ambiguous statement: experience itself is a skill that can be
improved. Let’s look at this from the much used example of the novice in the swordsman school. He’s given a wooden sword with which to practice. He spends a lot of his time chatting with his friends at the school, running errands around town for a few spare coins, and, of course, practicing. He works alone on his technique. He also receives instructor training on sword forms. But, perhaps most of all, he likes to spar with his friends and peers. He has gotten really good at sparring with his friends, but he still is only engaging with friendly non-lethal combat. He has never been involved in a real battle where someone has the intent to cause him true violent harm.
This leads us all the way back to the karate teenager and Big Anthony. Most people choose Tony because he has experience in true fights. In the Dual Track System, participation in lethal combat is, in itself, a form of specialized experience. A character can “practice” or “improve” this skill by engaging in lethal forms of combat with actual enemies.
Specialized experience like “lethal combat experience” add modifiers to the skills of the character. True skill and knowledge are the absolute test of what a character can or cannot do, but specialized experience (just like statistics: strength, stamina, dexterity, etc.) can provide extra bonuses and chances for success or failure. To put it another way, specialized experience comes from placing the character in certain situations. Let’s examine a few other types of specialized experience.
What about our young swordsman in training. He’s gaining specialized experience too. Sparring is a form of specialized experience. The more he spars, the more experience he has in sparring overall, regardless of the conditions or the types of weapons used. If he one day, decides to spar with someone using war hammers, he’d be at a huge disadvantage because he doesn’t know anything about war hammers. But he does have a lot of experience in sparring. That might help him a little in the fight.
Staying with our swordsman. All his work is building up another piece of valuable specialized experience. Not so much from the type or conditions of his fights, but from who he fights. He spends all his time fighting other people with swords, humanoid opponents. That is a form of specialized experience too. Most people enrolled in the kingdom’s swordsman schools probably go on to become guards, constables, or even soldiers. All professions where the vast majority of their opponents will probably be humanoid, just the type he is training to fight.
Let’s say you need a skilled deer hunter to bring in a special type of deer meat for you. What do you look for? Someone with lots of archery skill? Someone with lots of skill in tracking and trapping? Or maybe someone who can make a special bait to lure deer to him? All of those are useful skills, but none have anything to do with the task at hand: hunting deer. A skilled deer hunter not only has a lot of those skills, but he also has specialized deer hunting experience. Every new deer he bags improves his ability to understand the nature of deer, and this gives him slight bonuses in doing that activity. Like before, you can track this back upstream as well. Hunting deer gives him experience in hunting that type of animal, but also gives him experience in dealing with animals overall. In this way, regional fisherman probably know a lot of about the fish in their region, but they also have a feel for fish in general. And the holy cleric who slays thousands of zombies, probably has a lot of experience with zombies as well dealing with the overall field of undead.
You might have figured. This can produce a great number of skills to track. Besides a character’s actual skills, now we’re also tracking his skills vs. broad categories of enemies as well as specific enemies. We’re also tracking his skill in doing certain activities (lethal vs. non-lethal combat). The major benefit is a skill system that allows each character to explore a new level of uniqueness. This of course, means an unheard of amount of total skills. Hundreds of trackings could be simultaneously going per character. No player would be able to keep track of all that, and they shouldn’t be asked too. This is another reason I argued so adamantly in the original Dual Track essay to hide the vast majority of numerical feedback from players. In most cases, the player wouldn’t even have a true sense of how much specialized experience a character has attained. But they will feel it’s effects. Especially when moving from one character to a new character.
Being a good fighter is knowing yourself and your capbilities. Being an experienced figher is knowing both yourself and your enemy.
Player Choice and Playstyles
One of the major goals of the Dual Track system is to allow nearly limitless character progression choices for the player. Specialized experience is just another tool for that end. Most games have players working their way up a standardized enemy ladder, but what if a player doesn’t want to do that.
Under the method described here, if a player wants to spend all their time fighting low skilled hill trolls: More power to them. Of course, after awhile, hill trolls will become incredibly easy, and the advancement of the character’s combat skills will dramatically slow. However, specialized experience will continue to climb. He’ll gain more and more experience fighting hill trolls. His knowledge will also grant him bonuses in fighting all other types of trolls as well.
Depending on the developer’s preferences, you could also implement some outward expressions of specialized knowledge achievements. Metals for those with lots of true battle experience. A guild certification from the deer hunter association, etc. It could even tie into the overall quest for knowledge described in the original Dual Track essay. Part of the requirements to enter a dragonslayer’s guild might be to actually have significant experience hunting dragons (and the horns/teeth etc. to prove it).
If a player finds an activity they enjoy, they should have a some benefit for pursuing it. We shouldn’t force players to move on to “bigger challenges” but instead, continue to offer some reward for their everyday adventures and unique choices of development. Specialized experience is one solution for that shift in design.
This essay can be considered a add-on to the Dual Track Advancement System essay. It’s probably a good idea to read that essay before this one, if you haven't already.
Knowledge and Skill Overview:
A quick recap of some of the concepts from the other essay. In the Dual Track System, advancement is broken into two areas. Skill, which improves through use. And Knowledge, which are abilities, spells, et cetera that are can be obtained in many different ways. With this essay, I want to take a closer look of one aspect of the system: the nature of training vs. actual experience.
Training vs. Experience:
Imagine if a teenager had been taking karate classes for a couple years. In the teenager’s neighborhood, local small time criminals have been causing trouble in the community. Should we send the teenager alone to confront the criminals in order to teach them a lesson and drive them out of the neighborhood? Before making a decision, most people would probably want some more information. How big and strong is the young man? Is his karate teacher well known? Are the karate classes challenging, or does the school promote everyone to black belt regardless of skill? Does the school focus on sparring primarily or technique and forms instead?
Or maybe you might want to know something about the neighborhood thugs. How many are there? Are they armed? With what? Have the thugs assaulted or injured anyone or do they just cause general mischief?
Lots of factors to consider. Now, how about we take the teenager out of the picture. Instead, we want to send Big Anthony to deal with the thugs. Tony, just pushing 45 years of age, is still a large imposing figure. Presently, he is the owner of a local warehouse. But for many years, he himself was a local hooligan not unlike our group of thugs. Tony has been through many dangerous street fights and now is dedicated to keeping the streets of his old neighborhood free from criminals. Would you rather send Big Anthony to deal with the thugs over the teenager? Why?
The capability of a person’s skill comes from a combination of their training and experience. Most people don’t pick the teenager as their champion, because they don’t know how much actual real fight experience he has had. The teenager is skilled, but most would rather bet on Tony’s combination of fighting skill and his fighting experience.
What if the group of thugs weren’t so small time? Instead they were seasoned killers armed with guns. Or instead of a group of thugs, it’s a pack of wild wolves. Or a crack U.S. Army Commando team. Or a lone black bear. In any of those situations, would you pick the teenager or Tony to do the fighting? You’d probably search for someone who has had the correct training and experience to successfully deal with the situation.
A character trained to do something has a certain amount of power and credibility. Likewise, so does someone with a lot of experience. The best characters; however, have a combination of training and a high amount of experience. This is part of the dynamic nature of the Dual Track Advancement System. It’s possible to create many different types of characters, each with a unique set of skills, knowledge, training, and experience.
Specialized Experience:
Recall from the other essay that all forms of knowledge are themselves skills. A fighter that learns a new kick from a trainer has gained the ability to use that new kick. However, the more he uses that kick, the better he becomes at using that specific kick. Likewise, the more he uses any kick, improves his overall kicking ability.
The same went for the alchemist who learned the healing potion. Or the mage who used his fire shard spell improved his fire shard ability, his ability with fire magic, and his skill at using magic in all its forms. All this from just practicing with the fire shard spell.
Now for a truly ambiguous statement: experience itself is a skill that can be
improved. Let’s look at this from the much used example of the novice in the swordsman school. He’s given a wooden sword with which to practice. He spends a lot of his time chatting with his friends at the school, running errands around town for a few spare coins, and, of course, practicing. He works alone on his technique. He also receives instructor training on sword forms. But, perhaps most of all, he likes to spar with his friends and peers. He has gotten really good at sparring with his friends, but he still is only engaging with friendly non-lethal combat. He has never been involved in a real battle where someone has the intent to cause him true violent harm.
This leads us all the way back to the karate teenager and Big Anthony. Most people choose Tony because he has experience in true fights. In the Dual Track System, participation in lethal combat is, in itself, a form of specialized experience. A character can “practice” or “improve” this skill by engaging in lethal forms of combat with actual enemies.
Specialized experience like “lethal combat experience” add modifiers to the skills of the character. True skill and knowledge are the absolute test of what a character can or cannot do, but specialized experience (just like statistics: strength, stamina, dexterity, etc.) can provide extra bonuses and chances for success or failure. To put it another way, specialized experience comes from placing the character in certain situations. Let’s examine a few other types of specialized experience.
What about our young swordsman in training. He’s gaining specialized experience too. Sparring is a form of specialized experience. The more he spars, the more experience he has in sparring overall, regardless of the conditions or the types of weapons used. If he one day, decides to spar with someone using war hammers, he’d be at a huge disadvantage because he doesn’t know anything about war hammers. But he does have a lot of experience in sparring. That might help him a little in the fight.
Staying with our swordsman. All his work is building up another piece of valuable specialized experience. Not so much from the type or conditions of his fights, but from who he fights. He spends all his time fighting other people with swords, humanoid opponents. That is a form of specialized experience too. Most people enrolled in the kingdom’s swordsman schools probably go on to become guards, constables, or even soldiers. All professions where the vast majority of their opponents will probably be humanoid, just the type he is training to fight.
Let’s say you need a skilled deer hunter to bring in a special type of deer meat for you. What do you look for? Someone with lots of archery skill? Someone with lots of skill in tracking and trapping? Or maybe someone who can make a special bait to lure deer to him? All of those are useful skills, but none have anything to do with the task at hand: hunting deer. A skilled deer hunter not only has a lot of those skills, but he also has specialized deer hunting experience. Every new deer he bags improves his ability to understand the nature of deer, and this gives him slight bonuses in doing that activity. Like before, you can track this back upstream as well. Hunting deer gives him experience in hunting that type of animal, but also gives him experience in dealing with animals overall. In this way, regional fisherman probably know a lot of about the fish in their region, but they also have a feel for fish in general. And the holy cleric who slays thousands of zombies, probably has a lot of experience with zombies as well dealing with the overall field of undead.
You might have figured. This can produce a great number of skills to track. Besides a character’s actual skills, now we’re also tracking his skills vs. broad categories of enemies as well as specific enemies. We’re also tracking his skill in doing certain activities (lethal vs. non-lethal combat). The major benefit is a skill system that allows each character to explore a new level of uniqueness. This of course, means an unheard of amount of total skills. Hundreds of trackings could be simultaneously going per character. No player would be able to keep track of all that, and they shouldn’t be asked too. This is another reason I argued so adamantly in the original Dual Track essay to hide the vast majority of numerical feedback from players. In most cases, the player wouldn’t even have a true sense of how much specialized experience a character has attained. But they will feel it’s effects. Especially when moving from one character to a new character.
Being a good fighter is knowing yourself and your capbilities. Being an experienced figher is knowing both yourself and your enemy.
Player Choice and Playstyles
One of the major goals of the Dual Track system is to allow nearly limitless character progression choices for the player. Specialized experience is just another tool for that end. Most games have players working their way up a standardized enemy ladder, but what if a player doesn’t want to do that.
Under the method described here, if a player wants to spend all their time fighting low skilled hill trolls: More power to them. Of course, after awhile, hill trolls will become incredibly easy, and the advancement of the character’s combat skills will dramatically slow. However, specialized experience will continue to climb. He’ll gain more and more experience fighting hill trolls. His knowledge will also grant him bonuses in fighting all other types of trolls as well.
Depending on the developer’s preferences, you could also implement some outward expressions of specialized knowledge achievements. Metals for those with lots of true battle experience. A guild certification from the deer hunter association, etc. It could even tie into the overall quest for knowledge described in the original Dual Track essay. Part of the requirements to enter a dragonslayer’s guild might be to actually have significant experience hunting dragons (and the horns/teeth etc. to prove it).
If a player finds an activity they enjoy, they should have a some benefit for pursuing it. We shouldn’t force players to move on to “bigger challenges” but instead, continue to offer some reward for their everyday adventures and unique choices of development. Specialized experience is one solution for that shift in design.
