Where is this game going?

[Space_Cadet]

Coda forever!!!

[vecna35]

Originally posted by Uruz
In my experience, there's a difference between d20's levels and CODA's levels. In d20 (OGL or D&D) your advancement in experience is governed by what monsters you kill, what traps you disarm, etc. To attain each new level, you must earn 1000 experience on top of what you had to earn for the previous level. Also, your class abilities are more or less defined by your skill level, and you earn a fixed amount of skill points based on what class you level up in.

In CODA, no matter how experienced the character is, it costs 1000 experience to "level" - and I put that in quotes mostly because it only indicates when you "get better." You may trade in 1000 experience to get five Advancement picks, which can be traded in to increase nearly anything about your character. The great thing about this system is that you get to choose what you improve. You could solely improve your skillset if you wanted, or you could increase an attribute. You could get a new professional ability and some skills, or you could get a new Edge or two. It's much more flexible than the d20 system.

I agree but my main beef is with the adventures. A level concept in d&d was a great evaluation of the difficulty you put one through. ie a group of 4th level PCs would have a DM use/narrate a module designed for PCs level 3-5 or 4-6 (u get the idea). But with Coda I have not seen any adventures for PCs with say 12 advancements under there belt....its a daunting task for the GM/narrator to design an adventure that meets the challenge of those PCs. In d&d a PC would fight perhaps a monster 2 levels greater or a thief would disarm a trap with a bit more damage potential but still something within the 4th level area.
For me I like how coda allowed you to pick what ever you want when advancing but show me an adventure that examines that and states its for PCs with advancements 8-10 or 4-7 (u get the idea)

[REG]

Originally posted by Uruz

In my experience, there's a difference between d20's levels and CODA's levels. In d20 (OGL or D&D) your advancement in experience is governed by what monsters you kill, what traps you disarm, etc. To attain each new level, you must earn 1000 experience on top of what you had to earn for the previous level. Also, your class abilities are more or less defined by your skill level, and you earn a fixed amount of skill points based on what class you level up in.

When d20 System was launched -- and I have kept abreast of the rules' evolution and innnovative mechanics by those within and without WotC -- people were concerned about the "body count" award system. But WotC and many third-party publishers in the d20 network have offered many alternative award systems.

As for class abilities, well, they either tend to be easier to gain than people not of the same class, or display talent only people of that class have (trade secrets). I'm sure engineers have a knack when it comes to equipments than a security officer who probably limited to certain tech he's exposed to.

Skill point allotment is given when it is balanced with all other aspects of the class, including class abilities.

Of course, one has to remember that because of the Opennes of the rules system, everything can be modified, and should be, if you want to make a viable game for certain genres. It is as flexible as the designers want them to be, and does not have to be balanced with the D&D core ruleset. To do that, you, a designer, have self-imposed such restriction.

It's much more flexible than the d20 system.

Perhaps with the d20 System ruleset presented in those System Reference Documents (both Revised and Modern), which is based off the D&D and d20 Modern material.

But as AslanC and Kenneth Hite have mentioned, many rules engines have spawned off from that system and in the market now. Dubbed "2nd-Gen d20," we got ruleset that are more flexible and yet easy to play than the standard, such as those presented in Mutants & Masterminds (designed by Steve Kenson, credited for the unpublished Klingon supplement for Last Unicorn Games).

Then there's the matter of 2d6 versus d20. The bell curve of two dice being rolled produces a mathematical average of 7, whereas you have equal chances of rolling any number on a d20. This gives you much more control over your character's success and failure at any given task.

I don't know if the mechanics of rolling random di(c)e should be easier or difficult for the gamers. Does the mathematical average mirror that of our real-world experience?

I don't think this game would be the same if it followed d20 rules.

I dunno. When I first played Star Wars d6, I didn't much like the ruleset. But I also thought that no one else can do any better. So I'm stuck in that rut.

But WotC managed to make SW very playable, and with a system I'm already familiar with.

I thought that superhero game is not possible, especially with Champion still the king. Granted, Champion is still the king, but Mutants & Masterminds makes it easier to get into, like D&D, as an entry-level game.

We don't know what holds in the upcoming d20 Modern supplement titled, d20 Future. But since I like d20 Modern, and a few folk from the Star Wars design team is writing the supplement (one of whom is the webmaster of Holonet and SWRPGNetwork, also a colleague of Don Mappin when they contributed to Stargate SG-1), I'm picking it up as a birthday gift this August.

(Of course, if you ask me, the MnM rules engine -- sans superpowers -- is the most appropriate for Star Trek.)

[IceGiant]

Well that's because Star Trek isn't about fighting monsters like D&D is. The NG lists the various xp rewards for succeeding at various tasks. And llet's face it, i shoot at an enemy with my phaser on a high enough setting and it doesn't matter how many wounds he has, instant dead.
You're out to challenge the characters, that in ST usually means solving some dilemma or saving the planet from starving to death.
The number of advancements really has no bearing on the "toughness" of the encounter, it just means your characters will succeed more die-roll wise. But if you role play it, most situations don't even need a die roll.

[Ergi]

Originally posted by vecna35

For me I like how coda allowed you to pick what ever you want when advancing but show me an adventure that examines that and states its for PCs with advancements 8-10 or 4-7 (u get the idea)

The problem is that CODA allows a much greater variety of player types. So you could end up with all players having low combat skill levels, something not possible in D&D (and even if they have low scores they have magical abilities making up for that "deficit"). Additionaly, D&D adventures focus a lot on fighting so the designers can easily calculate the minimum level necessary for successfully completing (i.e. surviving) a specific adventure.
The same is not possible using the CODA rules, at least for Star Trek. Your 20th level fighter wouldn't stand much of a chance against a phaser set to vaporize. This lethality and higher unpredictability of combat in CODA Trek is one of the reasons why the adventures focus more on roleplaying and not so much on skill levels. I am sure that if you somehow converted a D20 modern or D20 Star Wars party to CODA it would still be difficult to impossible to provide sensible level ranges for the Trek adventures available.

[AslanC]

Having run Mutants & Masterminds recently, the level thing really comes into it. Any villain with +2 lvls on the PCs was a serious threat to them, but +5 lvls was near unstopable, since its attack values and defense values and power values all went up. I actually found that limiting, for superheroes. I wanted to make a powerful mentalist, who was a push over outside of his mental powers, but since he was lvl 15, he was still pretty bloody tough.

But that said, having a lvl guide is a boon to a ref for putting together threat values or challenge values of adventures.

CODA does make that harder, since not all the characters are the same level (in fact there are some disparaging level differences between say the Captain and the Chief of Helm or Security).

But again, I do like CODA, so no DPU apples, regular rotten ones will be fine

[IceGiant]

REG,
But does it have a ship creation and combat system built in or is that something you'd have to make up on your own.

[REG]

Originally posted by IceGiant

REG,
But does it have a ship creation and combat system built in or is that something you'd have to make up on your own.

It has only the combat rules for both starships and vehicle, alongside the personal combat rules.

Ship creation can be found in the Starships of the Galaxy supplement, but many of us are hoping they follow the new products for the revised core rulebook (e.g., Ultimate Alien Anthology, Ultimate Adversaries). A Battlestation supplement was already written out (Rodney "Moridin" Thompson is credited for that work) but for marketing reason, they decided to devote the latter half of this year to launching SW minis and delay new SW RPG product release until next year.

[REG]

Originally posted by IceGiant

Well that's because Star Trek isn't about fighting monsters like D&D is. The NG lists the various xp rewards for succeeding at various tasks. And llet's face it, i shoot at an enemy with my phaser on a high enough setting and it doesn't matter how many wounds he has, instant dead.
You're out to challenge the characters, that in ST usually means solving some dilemma or saving the planet from starving to death.
The number of advancements really has no bearing on the "toughness" of the encounter, it just means your characters will succeed more die-roll wise. But if you role play it, most situations don't even need a die roll.

Well, Star Wars offer an award system based on the three levels of the Encounter Goal: Simple, Challenging, and Extreme. You can use this as a guide for any kind of encounter, not necessarily monsters. You need to slip past the guards and unto your ship? That's Challenging. You need to rescue a crew of a ship in distress while fighting a squadron of three Klingon cruiser, that's Extreme.

[Tobian]

To be honest - the few times that I have run D20 games I have hated how they work in terms of *find the level of the beast you are fighting then look that up on a table, but multiply it byu the number of them and..... ARGHHHHHHH* I just couldn't get my head round the whole thing - I have greatly enjoyed PLAYING in them because people will advanced mathematics degrees have kindly run them for me

I just preferred the whole concept of Coda.. you set the rewards according to how hard you think it should be for them.. there's allot of fudge factor there and from the get-go it's designed with the idea of non combat based challenges.

I award FAR more experience because players have solved the mission as opposed to the number of things they killed - that involves head thinking as opposed to rinse and repeat dice rolls. The rules system revolves arround that.

That said I have liked the rules on Stargate d20 - where it says to award an ammount of experience based on how much you think they should get per mission - aka enough to level them - as opposed to the number of things they hit. So yes it is POSSIBLE to do this in d20 and yes MnM might be good (it seemed inordinatelly complicated for my poor head !) but I would just prefer that they just didn't make d20 startrek as it'd then just be another clone *yawn*

Possibly making all players a set level 95 10 or 15) in a M&M style way might make it feel more trek because then you hardly ever go up in level but then you suddenly go from the problem of reconciling level differences on rank to everyone is the same level... Level just doesn't work with how StarTrek should work!

[Sea Tyger]

Originally posted by Tobian
To be honest - the few times that I have run D20 games I have hated how they work in terms of *find the level of the beast you are fighting then look that up on a table, but multiply it byu the number of them and..... ARGHHHHHHH* I just couldn't get my head round the whole thing

The first thing you should do is to stop equating D&D with d20. You're taking one genre (heroic high-fantasy) and making it the norm for all of the different possibilities that d20 provides.

As REG said, SWd20 modified the experience system by the "challenge" of the encounter..."encounter" being defined as a significant event where the outcome is in doubt. This is a lot broader than killing an opponent; it applies to sneaking past Stormtroopers or flying through an asteroid field, and so on.

I just preferred the whole concept of Coda.. you set the rewards according to how hard you think it should be for them.. there's allot of fudge factor there and from the get-go it's designed with the idea of non combat based challenges.

Believe it or not, there are printed guidelines in the DMG for *gasp!* ignoring the encounter level experience chart, so even D&D allows for a GM to assign experience points as he or she sees fit.

Level just doesn't work with how StarTrek should work!

I'm sorry, but that's an absurd statement. Why do levels have to be tied to rank at all?

In general, you would expect a captain to have more experience than an ensign (well, except maybe Harry Kim, but he's an anomaly ). So, you expect that a captain would have more skills and abilities than an ensign.

Level is just an indicator of experience, regardless of the games experience point system, and is used to provide for the distribution of new skills and abilities. As you saw with M&M, you don't even need the standard d20 experience system for a d20/OGL game.

So, a captain would generally have more levels (or, say, advancements) than an ensign.

What would that mean in a d20 Trek? A captain would likely have a number of levels in his original field of specialty (engineering, science, flight control, etc.), possibly couple levels here-and-there of cross training, and at least a couple levels of command (just to use the names of the Coda professions). His rank would likely be handled very similar to Coda edges, through the purchase of feats or class abilities.

The ensign, on the other hand, depending on how much shipboard time he has, would likely have only one or two levels in his specialty field. Of course, the argument has been made about the 1st-level captain and a 7th-level ensign. The 1st-level captain, by definition of the rank (not the position, since you could have a ensign straight out of the academy take command of a small craft, like a runabout), is not realistic; however, the 7th-level ensign is a possibility, given that the character may have actually started out as an enlist and worked his way up the ranks.

So, you can see, levels are workable in Star Trek; Coda has proven that.

And another thing, if levels have no place in Star Trek, then why is there a field on the character sheet to keep track of advancements?

[REG]

Originally posted by Sea Tyger

The first thing you should do is to stop equating D&D with d20. You're taking one genre (heroic high-fantasy) and making it the norm for all of the different possibilities that d20 provides.

It's a common myth. But once a designer or a publisher frees himself from that restriction (i.e., using D&D as the benchmark), they should be able to make whatever game they want with the rules system, even offer an alternative format (e.g., Mutants & Masterminds).

I'm sorry, but that's an absurd statement. Why do levels have to be tied to rank at all?

In general, you would expect a captain to have more experience than an ensign (well, except maybe Harry Kim, but he's an anomaly ). So, you expect that a captain would have more skills and abilities than an ensign.

Level is just an indicator of experience, regardless of the games experience point system, and is used to provide for the distribution of new skills and abilities. As you saw with M&M, you don't even need the standard d20 experience system for a d20/OGL game.

So, a captain would generally have more levels (or, say, advancements) than an ensign.

What would that mean in a d20 Trek? A captain would likely have a number of levels in his original field of specialty (engineering, science, flight control, etc.), possibly couple levels here-and-there of cross training, and at least a couple levels of command (just to use the names of the Coda professions). His rank would likely be handled very similar to Coda edges, through the purchase of feats or class abilities.

The ensign, on the other hand, depending on how much shipboard time he has, would likely have only one or two levels in his specialty field. Of course, the argument has been made about the 1st-level captain and a 7th-level ensign. The 1st-level captain, by definition of the rank (not the position, since you could have a ensign straight out of the academy take command of a small craft, like a runabout), is not realistic; however, the 7th-level ensign is a possibility, given that the character may have actually started out as an enlist and worked his way up the ranks.

So, you can see, levels are workable in Star Trek; Coda has proven that.

I guess the obstacle would be how to create experienced characters? The most easy version is assign who is the captain, XO, and department heads among the players than give them the most appropriate level for their roles. They can choose what skills and feats they need for the PC.

But that is kinda boring. I'm used to fleshing out the character during the creation phase (spoiled by FASA and LUG versions).

If you can somehow incorporate T20: Traveller rules on Prior History, you can give PC a meatier background due to events they encoutered on his/her previous tours of duty.

[Doug Burke]

Originally posted by REG
I'm used to fleshing out the character during the creation phase (spoiled by FASA and LUG versions).

If you can somehow incorporate T20: Traveller rules on Prior History, you can give PC a meatier background due to events they encoutered on his/her previous tours of duty.

Actually, for my own game, I've come up with a conversion of the old FASA post-academy experience charts for CODA. I'm typing it up for submission to BTFF.

[IceGiant]

Go Doug Go, Go Doug Go!!!
If Gandolf doesn't accept it, we''l just have to hire some Nausican "helpers" to get him to see the light!!

[Tobian]

Yes sorry guys, it was a contention, my contention, it's how I feel and in more based in personal opinion than objective statement.

However I just don't see the point in bending and folding and spindling a rules system so much that all you basically have left is a.... 20 sided dice... Once you've taken out everything which makes a game what it is.. all you have is that.

Yes there are such things as feats, special abilities and skills but I mean come on guys - they are present in other rules systems which would be FAR more appropriate to use than d20 - because they WOULDN'T have to be changed at all.

Mutants and Masterminds is a system which works for it's genre.. But it is about as similar to any other D20 game as Coda is to White Wolf.. You could NOT take a D&D Character OR Stargate OR D20 Moder, OR d20 Traveler into MnM - you just could not - which *IS* the entire point of having a cross compatible rules system - so all you basically have is ... a 20 sided dice and skills..

Take Coda.. if you are so D20 obsessed replace 2d6 with a d20 and you have... a D20 game which is about as interoperable with D20 modern as Mutants and Masterminds is... there you go .. happy?