Chris Avellone on Wasteland 1, old school skills and role-playing

[WorstUsernameEver]

Maybe one day we'll have an official topic for Chris' blog posts? Anyway, I thought this deserved its own topic since he's written on how a broad, detailed skill selection/character creation can enhance the role-playing experience of a player, which goes pretty much in the face of the modern trend of simplified character systems (Obsidian is following suit with that by the way, so it's kinda doubly interesting). Link: http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/1/entry-164-wasteland-1-and-that-old-school-skill-set-symphony/

[CoffeeMinx]

May I ask you a stupid question? What is the difference between skills and stats? Perception is listed as a skill, dexterity and strength are stats.

 

Also, in your opinion, how would you rate Fallout: New Vegas on the simplified vs. detailed scale?

 

 

 

n00bity n00b n00b

[WorstUsernameEver]

May I ask you a stupid question? What is the difference between skills and stats? Perception is listed as a skill, dexterity and strength are stats.

 

Not sure if I'm the most indicated to answer! But I suspect perception was put in skills rather than stats for game balance reasons rather than any other kind of rationale, since stats and skills work in fundamentally different ways in Wasteland (although you can use both for checks, which makes certain skills super-useless, like clone tech).

 

As for Fallout: New Vegas, I'd say it had a pretty decent character system in theory, but it was kinda marred by the abundance of skill points, relative uselessness of weapon skills and stats were really mostly useless. They kinda got around it in dialogue, but the system in itself was very forgiving.

 

Although, uh, I'm just a dude, so I'm not sure how much you care about my replies (Chris doesn't interact too much on the forums so it's more likely that he'd answer to these questions on the blog or via mail if they were intended for him).

[CoffeeMinx]

...if they were intended for him...

 

 

No, no, they were intended for you. I definitely care about your replies.

 

(I never played paper RPGs so I'm a bit out of my depth.)