[Rq-rules] Re: Farewell to CON and thoughts on APP

[Lev Lafayette]

--- Tom Cantine <tcantine at incentre.net> wrote:

> 
> On 14-Jan-07, at 5:01 AM, Simon Phipp wrote:
> 
> > Paul Cardwell:
> > > I agree about APP.  As Gygax pointed out (and
> was
> > > immediately misinterpreted by game-bashers),
> some of
> > >the most charismatic individuals, good and bad,
> were
> > >hardly physically attractive.
> > Yes, so it would be better to have separate APP
> and CHA 
> > characteristics, one to denote pure physical
> attractiveness and one to 
> > denote magnetism and charisma.
> 
> I think I may have briefly mentioned this idea on
> this list before, but 
> just last week I was thinking about it some more,
> and since it seems to 
> be topical, I'm going to do it again.
> 
> I've always been troubled a bit by traits like APP,
> which are in real 
> life pretty darned subjective,

They're enormously subjective; so subjective that I
don't think it is possible to derive an objective
characteristic from it. It really is only possibly to
describe a characters features (e.g., age, health,
athleticism, hair/eye/skin colour and cline) and leave
it at that.

> notwithstanding that
> there's also a 
> large degree of consensus within a community as to
> who's attractive and 
> who isn't. So the approach I would like to take is
> to break up the 3d6 
> of APP into separate components, a racial (species),
> cultural and 
> individual component. Each character would record on
> their sheet only 
> the first two; the individual component is
> subjective, "in the eye of 
> the beholder", and rolled up for each viewer. The
> reaction of each 
> viewer would always be determined by the sum of all
> three values, but 
> certain values can be limited by the viewer's
> unfamiliarity with the 
> species or cultural norms.

(snip)

Too much crunch, imo. Dedicate the amount of game
mechanics to the characteristic on the basis of its
use in the game. If the game is about visual
appearances, by all means go to that level of detail.

Regards,


Lev


 
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