Give me your Coda Q's and Feedback (Good and Bad)

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Originally posted by Trotsky


Of course, given that I don't like the idea of there being any difference between professional and non-professional skills, either, that's not really going to worry me ;)

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having all skills cost the same is an invitation to unrestrained munckinism.

It also makes some sense that you will develop the skills you use in your profession faster than those that you don't because you use them more often. All in all however, it's just a game mechanic, designed to provide some balance to the system and make it harder for people to abuse it.

Allen

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Originally posted by Trotsky

Why change to an inferior product, even if its only a little bit inferior?

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You might want to consider in the future a more diplomatic phrase such as "why change to a product that doesn't do what I want it to do?" the unqualified use of 'inferior' could be somewhat insulting to people who worked hard on this game. Not to mention which, since your opinion seems to be in the minority around here (and you are entitled to it), there are many of us who do not think the system is inferior, and your blanket statement is a bit jarring.

Allen

How exactly does Trait Upgrade work? Maybe I just don't understand the exact way it works because english is not my native language. What the PG says on page 138 is:

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You can upgrade one edge that cannot normally be upgraded,... (emphasis added by me)

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Now is that can as in "by taking the edge Trait Upgrade the bonus from an edge you have is doubled" or is that can as in "by taking Trait Upgrade you are allowed to upgrade another edge by buying said edge again", i.e. it only qualifies you for the upgrade but doesn't provide the upgrade itself?

AllenS wrote:
"having all skills cost the same is an invitation to unrestrained munckinism. "

Hmm, I acutally don't see this. In both of the previous Trek games I am familiar with (LUG, FASA) there were no restrictions on who could pick up what skills and this never led to extreme munchkins in my games. Then again, this may have just been because of my players.

The more I look at the professions, the less happy I am with them.

This probably means that in the end my game will be some sort of riff off all three systems I have at hand ;)

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Originally posted by Lancer
How exactly does Trait Upgrade work? Maybe I just don't understand the exact way it works because english is not my native language. What the PG says on page 138 is:

Now is that can as in "by taking the edge Trait Upgrade the bonus from an edge you have is doubled" or is that can as in "by taking Trait Upgrade you are allowed to upgrade another edge by buying said edge again", i.e. it only qualifies you for the upgrade but doesn't provide the upgrade itself?

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I'm fairly certain that Trait Upgrade itself IS the upgrade. That's what I intepreted it as. You buy it and it doubles the effect of a trait..once. You cannot buy it multiple times for the same trait.

Allen

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Originally posted by Ramage
AllenS wrote:
"having all skills cost the same is an invitation to unrestrained munckinism. "

Hmm, I acutally don't see this. In both of the previous Trek games I am familiar with (LUG, FASA) there were no restrictions on who could pick up what skills and this never led to extreme munchkins in my games. Then again, this may have just been because of my players.

The more I look at the professions, the less happy I am with them.

This probably means that in the end my game will be some sort of riff off all three systems I have at hand ;)

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FASA had a somewhat Travelleresque character creation system involving rolling to see what happened on your tours of duty that tended to funnel you into certain skills depending on what your profession on ship was. You could take other skills at certain points, but the random nature of how many points you had for those skills tended to be the limiting factor needed to avoid rampant abuse.

LUG used a similar idea with their templates and tours of duty, although of course it was not as random. Only if you used the "advanced" character creation rules were you basically into free and unrestrained point spending. And even then, as GM, I had to make sure the characters were suitable for their roles on ship, so I set the point total low enough that they pretty much HAD to spend their points on the skills they needed and not add a lot of off-character fluff for game effect only.

Coda is somewhat more freeform than any of the above, and the professions help keep characters focused on what they will be doing aboard ship or in the campaign rather than letting them evolve into "jacks of all trades and masters of none". and depending on how many advancements you start with, the cost difference between professional and non-professional skills can become fairly insignificant.

Allen

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Originally posted by Ramage
Hmm, I acutally don't see this. In both of the previous Trek games I am familiar with (LUG, FASA) there were no restrictions on who could pick up what skills and this never led to extreme munchkins in my games. Then again, this may have just been because of my players.

The more I look at the professions, the less happy I am with them.

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Well, as about everything in life this depends on how you look at it. Professions give the character a focus, a certain direction of development, which IMHO is quite realistic. While I have an easy time picking up some skills at work once I am back home I often find I lack the time or energy to learn new things in my spare time. Why shouldn't it be the same in the 24th century?

And there are more ways to increase skills outside your profession than just spending 2 advancements for 1 skill level. Just take a Skill Focus for example. As an edge it costs the same picks as raising a non-professional skil once and gives you a better bonus to your "effective" skill level. Sure, it's not the same as raising the skill itself, but the result is the same. Especially if you just want to give your character a hobby this could be the best way to go.

What I am more concerned about when it comes to munchkins are certain combinations of professional abilities and edges that can make your skill levels pale in comparison. I'll reserve a final judgment in this matter until after reading the Narrator's Guide. Until we see more on how experience (and thereby advancements) are to be handed out for an adventure it's difficult to say how "powerfull" a character will become compared to an ICON character with the same number of missions under his belt.

I tend to agree with Lancer here.

I like the professions because, as I see it, they provide a bonus to learn specific skills that you use often "at work": I think it more realistic to consider the non-professional skills upgrade cost as the standard progression rate. Thus, professions are not there to keep you from developing other skills, on the contrary they ease depeloping the few specific ones that you exert often.

However, I too am worried about possible "combos" that could appear with judicious combinations of professional abilities and traits. Anybody experienced such a thing already?

Lancer: Allen is exactly right. Taking Trait Upgrade gives you an upgrade on a normally non-upgradable trait. For example, when converting the characters for my current game from Icon to Coda, we were uncertain how to handle the Sixth Sense Advantage for the LUG PG until the player remembered the Trait Upgrade edge. The character now has Alert 2 (Alert + Trait Upgrade). :)

Doug, thanks for answering that. :)

Makes me wonder why the upgrade possibilities were not included with the edges in the first place. First ssaying that a trait can't be upgraded and then providing a very convenient way to do it nevertheless strikes me as a little... odd.
Oh well, maybe it was a late addition to the game and no one wanted to rewrite all the trait descriptions to retrofit them with upgrade possibilities. ;)

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You might want to consider in the future a more diplomatic phrase such as "why change to a product that doesn't do what I want it to do?"

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I thought I'd been very careful to say that I was referring only to what I wanted out of a game, not its absolute quality. E.g. 'Many people will like this system', 'from my POV...' etc. But in case it hasn't been clear, I will restate it:

This is not, so far as I can tell, a bad system. There are bits of it I see nothing wrong with at all, and the bits I don't like are relatively minor. It just isn't as good (for me) as existing alternatives.

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having all skills cost the same is an invitation to unrestrained munckinism.

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I've never had this problem. Which isn't to say (once again) that you haven't, but I'm not commenting on whether or not the game is good for other people, and Don did specifically ask for negative comments as well as positive ones...

So far my biggest complaints are with the character sheet which is not very user friendly and with the non-intuitive layout of the book. For character creation, I like a very step-by-step layout of the chapters.

What I like - just about everything else. For a Players' Guide, I think there was the right amount and depth of both game mechanics and background. I have heard some complaints that there were no game mechanics for starships in the PG, but I have often found if too much extraneous info is given too players too early, they tend to make characters to enhance the hardware instead of concentrating on character concept and execution.

Ok picked up my copy of the PG today. I have been able to give it only the briefest scan. Immediate impressions;

1) As I have said art is part of the package, and DecTrek doesn't fall far from the mark...Only thing that brings it down, the archtypes artwork, too 'toonish.

2) Char Gen. The little I have read does make me want to try and convert a couple of characters.

3) Not sure why the little bleeps about ships was included when no stats were in the book.

4) I agree, a new character sheet is a must.

I shall get back later when I have had time to digest the volume.

Oh, I have one! :cool:
Decipher should pay Don for his character sheet, so that it becomes the new official character sheet (replacing that ugly black thing). They could offer it as a download, or include it in the GM screen ... the point is, this'd give him a good reason for finishing his sheet! :D
(disclaimer again: I still haven't managed to unstick my tongue ;) )

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Originally posted by Calcoran

(disclaimer again: I still haven't managed to unstick my tongue ;) )

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If I were you, I'd get that seen to :)