[Torg] Possibilities: Better Results Now VS Character Advancement

[Kansas Jim]

Benn writes:

> Here’s a thought for everyone to comment on (if so moved) – I’m actually 
> thinking of maybe making Possibilties NOT be useful for skill ups (and 
> awarding less of them) and instead handling skill advancement some other 
> way.

> What if possibilities were awarded as Act awards (2-3 or whatever), and 
> skill points were awarded as Arc awards (6-12)?  Or something like 
> that?  Maybe it would also be permissible, perhaps, for skill points to 
> be converted into possibilities, but not the reverse?

WEG did something similar with Masterbook, though looking at it in
more detail I see they did things a bit differently from what I
remembered. They broke P-Points up into Life Points and Skill Points,
with Skill Points only usable for improving things. Life Points were
just like P-Points but you could only have a maximum of 10 at any
time. If an award would take you over 10 LPs you had to convert the
extra into Skill Points (1 LP = 3 SPs). I had remembered it as you
receiving both LPs and SPs as awards during adventures but that wasn't
the case, awards were normally just in LPs, you only got SPs as an
award if the GM felt that you did something unusual and deserved an
extra award.

> On the other hand, I **have** had this idea about how raising skills 
> could be less about points and more about successful use and practice.  
> In other words, no skill points at all – you simply have a small chance 
> every time you use a skill in a significant way (up to GM) to go up in 
> it – perhaps each significant use of the skill earns a checkmark, and 
> each checkmark you get makes it more likely you will skill up.

I have at times thought about adopting the method for skill advancement
used by BRP/Call of Cthulhu. At the end of an adventure there's a chance
that every skill you used during the adventure will improve. You make
a skill check for each one and if you fail it, the skill improves a
little bit. If you succeed, it doesn't. The idea being that the higher
your skill, the less there is for you to learn so it becomes harder to
improve the skill. But if you have a low skill value there's still a lot
for you to learn so it's easier to improve it.

-- 
Kansas Jim, Torg guru (ksjim (at) sdc (dot) org)
Torg website: http://www.sdc.org/~ksjim/index.html