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A Detailed Mathematical Model
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Section V: Notes and Properties
These are my comments about the model — about properties that I see as desireable and undesireable, plus miscellaneous comments.
It is a discrete, integer, dice-oriented translation of a continuous, real-valued model having the following properties:
Miscellaneous: The model (or, more properly, the racial and age attribute adjustments and racial base skills) is not balanced. I intentionally placed realism above balance in model design.
Undesireable properties:
Desireable properties:
The model is continuous and real-valued.
Related attributes are correlated in value.
What attributes are, and their impact, is appropriate.
Adjustments take the form of multiplicands, rather than addends.
Adjustments make a substantial impact on individual checks, rather than just being a subtle and minute increment.
Attributes adjust skills.
Experience devoted to skills produces an appropriate law of diminishing returns — it takes a little while to learn a little, and a long while to become a virtuoso.
Related skills apply to each other.
The model is simple and unified — one model fits all — and can be easily programmed into a scientific calculator.
Once a character's skills are calculated, there is no more calculation for a while.
I like the way it handles time and actions.
Having listed other little virtues that this model possesses, I wish to delineate one virtue which I consider cardinal.
This model is small and incomplete; it possesses a limited domain.
It is the wide concensus of gamers that r-o-l-e-play is infinitely superior to r-o-l-l-play; this model is a miniscule thing which governs a timy part of play, and calls for contrainte in use. It governs certain natural abilities and certain developped skills; I would like to point out two major areas of play that it doesn't touch.
The first is something which is traditionally a part of play and which mathematical models are kept out of: tole play: who a character is, what his personality is, what makes him tick, what his spiritual state is. It is something which is governed by an understanding of how things are done that cannot be reduced to rules and algorithms. On this point, I don't feel the need to explain further.
The second is something which is traditionally a part of play in some form or other and which is traditionally governed by mathematical models, much to the detriment of play. It consists of things like the motion and gifts of the Spirit, the prayer of faith, divine intervention, etc.
In D&D, a cleric's prayer power is reduced to another form of mechanized spell casting: a cleric gets such and such many prayers of the following power levels per day, as a function of his wisdom and the number of creatures he has killed. Star Wars is no better: using the Force is just one more skill which happens to be accompanied by some more rules about conduct. Neither is GURPS.
God is good and he is reliable, but he is not safe and not tame, and certainly not predictable enough to reduce to a model. While God is not predictable, incorporating a great deal of randomness in a model won't cut it. God, when listening to prayers, weighs the petitioner's faith and motives, the situation, and then makes a decision that, while unpredictable, is governed by infinite love and wisdom. This is, if anything, less, not more, reducible to algorithms than personal interactions. This calls for the GM to pray, rely on the Spirit, and think. God's action must be handled as the most challenging and delicate role to portray, and it takes a game master created in the image of God to do.
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A Detailed Mathematical Model
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