I thought I would write a quick post to show that this little blog isn't (entirely!) moribund or defunct! I have actually done a bit of RPG gaming in the last year, it just hasn't led to any completed write-ups yet! But - and no promises - there is every chance of a playthrough and a review of the next WFRP Enemy Within module and also a couple of Shadowrun First Edition adventures.
But this post is more of a complaint. I have been looking at running a MERP adventure and a Twilight 2000 version 2 campaign and both of them contain entirely egregious examples of the authors totally destroying the foundations for their own attribute systems. They are useful though in that one has a good example of weirdness involving PCs, and the other NPCs.
I can't actually remember which MERP module I was looking at now, but I was looking at the attribute lines for the pre-generated PCs. There is simply no way that the attribute scores for the pre-gens have been rolled honestly. One set of freakily high scores - maybe. Two sets - just about. All of them (in a set of 10)? No. On one level, I don't have a problem with this, there is no particular drama with a set of adventurers in a combat-filled world having higher personal attributes than the vast majority of NPCs around them. But if you are going to do this, why not just make that the rules? Make high physical and mental attributes the norm. Or alternatively, MERP does the same for most of its named NPCs: why not just reduce the attribute levels to statistically plausible ones across the board? To take one recognizable yet at the same time fairly random 'name out of the hat', Galadriel in MERP has attribute scores of: Strength 95, Agility 100, Constitution 100, Intelligence 97, Intuition 100, Presence 102 (the scores are out of 102(!) and don't at this point include any bonuses 'for being an elf' - the average score should be c.55 for NPCs and c.63 for PCs (it's complicated!)). Why do we think from the source material that Galadriel should have a stat line anywhere near this? But this kind of nonsense almost forces the DM/players hand into finding their own home-brewed attribute generation systems to give themselves a chance.
Twilight 2000 has an interesting variation on this kind of fail. It gives the stat lines for some quite generic but very useful types of NPCs that a group might encounter. One especially caught my eye: The Unenthusiastic Militiaman. Twilight 2000 uses an attribute+skill system to show how good a character is at doing stuff. The average attribute for an under-35 years old character is supposed to be 5-6. A beginning professional infantry soldier will probably have a skill level of 3-4 with a rifle, so an overall 'asset' in the terminology of the rules of 8-10. Now, our unenthusiastic militiaman who is specifically designated as 'not very good at fighting' is deemed to have physical attributes of 6 and a starting skill of 3, also for an asset of 9, so is just as good as our average GI PC. This rather forces our PC to min-max (if using the distribute points chargen method); if generating attributes by die roll (2d6-2), then they are probably going to be less naturally competent characters than the average village militia member.
But! Twilight 2000 also has different attribute requirements for entry into various military jobs. But not to worry, our unenthusiastic militiaman can qualify for pretty much all of them, including the SAS and the Green Berets. I think that the only top-drawer military job out of their reach is the USMC Sniper, although Force Recon is fine...
Frankly, I really hate this kind of lazy character design - it spoils
the games in lots of ways, some obvious, some indirectly. The systems
above are less useful than The Window saying just have whatever
attributes you want which go along with your character concept.
Clearly T2000v2 made some horrible design choices although I think it would have taken relatively little to improve it, Point buy systems encourage min-maxing anyway, but if the number of points given is what an average NPC has, more-or-less, then it becomes inevitable. Most T2000 characters benefit from taking Strength 10 (since most combat skills are based on that: non-combatants should probably pick Charisma instead), another attribute at 10, and then all the rest at 2-4. I think points buy works better if the PCs are going to be distinctly better than average, since then the choices are to min-max in a few areas, or to min-max in only 1 or 2 and be average or a little above in the others. MERP on the other hand has a reasonable system which it clearly had no confidence in itself.
