No professions, please!

[Bolgfred]

After reading the fifth thread about professions* I knew, all this forum needs is number six!

 

The idea

Replace professions by multiple traits

 

In detail

I think about something like personality, profession, free time activities, place of birth/living, physical attributes, private interest, social circumstances and so on. My idea would be to split this profession thing in a few different categories, so a player can have more traits than one. I'd name it more a redesign, than an improvement to the current system.

I think there are many things you can mix together, which can tell a little story about this person. Not everything needs to have an effect. Might be cool if they get random generated(I'd like that).

 

Why I think its cool

My point is, I don't like classing. It makes me feel like something special and tries to define/influence me someway. Not too much people walk around telling everyone they are a construction worker**, and rarely people will ask a fire fighter about how his fire fighting goes in his fire fighting spare time. Electricians usually don't throw light bulbs around wherever they go*** My point is: People are mot than just a class, they are the sum of their life. 

 

Some examples: (personality/profession/ interest / background)

 

• optimistic security guard who plays baseball who was married twice
• angry unemployed who loves hiking**** and sometimes helped out
• intrigating secretary with a passion on hunting
• dreamy fire fighter with children from England
• patient cook with a passion on comics, speaks Japanese and German

* yes I was counting them

**  I am a construction worker, I am a construction worker, look at me construction worker, here come the construction worker...

*** There might be exceptions

**** angry hiking is cool. You can rage at every brush you see, punch trees and.. ouch that hurt.. but nobody cares.

[Dryke]

To be fair to the concept of professions, there is nothing about the profession system that requires anyone to identify what their profession is to anyone else - nor is there any implication that your character is limited by their profession.  It's simply a way to introduce a skill that you otherwise could not choose.  As realism goes, it's a pretty solid concept; some professions would lead to training and practice that might result in a practical skill for someone trying to survive the apocalypse.  That's not to say that EVERY trait related to a profession is super realistic, but the idea is sound.

 

If you don't like classing, you can always select 'none' for profession - but then that is in itself a 'class' if you think about it:  You choose to be a shiftless layabout who never bothered to get a consistent job anywhere prior to the apocalypse, OR you got a job that didn't impart any useful skill ("Would you like fries with that, sir?").  Alternately, a suggestion might be that if you do not choose one of the predefined professions, you get an extra 2 or 4 trait points to spend instead.

[Tyler the Super Ranger]

Perhaps along with your name you could set your age and describe your character in a blank feild. If you choose you can talk about your characters life and how he came to get the job he had, along with any skills or traits he possesses.

[Bolgfred]

It's simply a way to introduce a skill that you otherwise could not choose. 

 

Technically thats what I mean. My idea is just that you can choose three unique skills from three different pools, like mood/profession/background. And yes, it would bite itself a bit with the traits.

[Rathlord]

I dunno, differentiating characters is going to be very important for a solid multiplayer experience in the future. In my opinion, having different people in your group fulfill different roles in a meaningful way is important; having a strong, front line fighter feel and play differently than the smart, bookish doctor is important. Sure, people can take traits to blur the edges a bit, but on the whole you should feel like you bring something special to the table in your group, that you add something to the dynamic. That's the way you make good groups, good gameplay, and good stories in my opinion.

[EnigmaGrey]

Aye, never been a fan of a free-form class or classless system, even if it makes sense based on the realities of today.

On that note, I'd rather see professions have more of a point, rather than be a singular free trait. But, that's sort of the opposite of what you want, Bolg, so I'll leave that discussion for another unsuspecting thread.

[Impetiso]

Ok, let's take a look on how you create a character and how you choose the traits.

First you choose a occupation, and it will give you a "class trait".
Then, you choose other traits freely. Some of them are phisical, some of them are psychological, and the other two are... a matter of luck.
And when you choose the traits, you just build the character as you wish.
 
You want to build a character by choosing personality, profession, interest and background (from now on, PPIB)? Well, you can make that righ now by choosing the right traits:
 

• optimistic security guard who plays baseball who was married twice
• angry unemployed who loves hiking**** and sometimes helped out
• intrigating secretary with a passion on hunting
• dreamy fire fighter with children from England
• patient cook with a passion on comics, speaks Japanese and German

Characters:

• Security guard, optimistic* , strong/stout, short sighted (just a joke, because he didn't see the failure of the first marriage comming)
• Unemployed, short tempered, strong/stout, unlucky
• Secretary, scheamer*, eagle eye
• Fire fighter, inattentive*, brave,  hardened drinker (take no offense, english peopple)
• Cook, patient, fast reader*, keen hearing (kind of)

* New traits
These are your characters, the traits you choose make your character history, that's how it's ment to be. That's it, you only need more traits to create a character based on PPIB .

 

And then you may think the PPIB idea it's better than choosing traits, but that's a bad idea because it would be unfair. Why would you choose a bad personality? or a not-so-good interest? why choosing a background that gives you nothing good at all?. if you have to choose PPIB, trait points won't be logical. why can't you be optimistic, strong and resilent if a bodybuilder can be optimistic and hasn't been sick since 2005?. You should be able to choose the PPIB as you wish, and that's the unfair point.

Choosing traits, on the other hand, force you decide bad traits to pick good ones, and the best traits require more/worst traits to even the points. You just can't be an all mighty survivor, you have yo sacrifice something to get te best traits... and then you can write the history of your character.  

So you choose a park ranger, claustrophobic, coward and athletic? then you can say your character saw a murder in his house when he was young, and run and hide in a closet, the closet locked and he cant get out in two days, when the someone called the police and they found him. That tragic event made him claustrophobic and coward, so he decided to work on something on open spaces, and he end up walking through the forest as a park ranger. 

 

I think choosing traits and occupations serves better, as you can choose the history of your character as you wish. The problem is, traits and occupations are scarce and not well balanced, and that makes writing a proper background difficult.

[Bolgfred]

Hm.. not easy. But thanks for the replies.

 

In my opinion, having different people in your group fulfill different roles in a meaningful way is important; having a strong, front line fighter feel and play differently than the smart, bookish doctor is important. Sure, people can take traits to blur the edges a bit, but on the whole you should feel like you bring something special to the table in your group, that you add something to the dynamic. That's the way you make good groups, good gameplay, and good stories in my opinion.

Yes, difference is key for team play. Otherwise its mostly acting single next to each other and think they work together. So, hell no, I don't want to loose the difference of characters. Its just that I find it more interesting if the roles are generated by different sources, so there are more variations. But thats truly a question of opinion. Some people like D&D4, some prefer D&D3. Personally I like it very detailed. But thats not for everyone.

 

On that note, I'd rather see professions have more of a point, rather than be a singular free trait. But, that's sort of the opposite of what you want, Bolg, so I'll leave that discussion for another unsuspecting thread.

Yes, yes, agree with me.. or go away. But wait... non-dreary professions aren't that bad if placed well.

 

 

These are your characters, the traits you choose make your character history, that's how it's ment to be. That's it, you only need more traits to create a character based on PPIB .

Oversimplifed, thats my idea by PPIB. More traits, put in categories. By now there are two categories. First is professions, second is anything else. I simply like it a bit more sorted. Nothing more nothing less.

 

 

And then you may think the PPIB idea it's better than choosing traits, but that's a bad idea because it would be unfair. Why would you choose a bad personality? 

 

I never seen a bad personality. rough example: A paranoid is probably watching his surrounding more carefully than somebody else, but  constantly on a decent panic level. A depressed character is going better with failure than an optimistic, who mostly expects things to be better than they are. Can you live with that?

[Impetiso]

These are your characters, the traits you choose make your character history, that's how it's ment to be. That's it, you only need more traits to create a character based on PPIB .

Oversimplifed, thats my idea by PPIB. More traits, put in categories. By now there are two categories. First is professions, second is anything else. I simply like it a bit more sorted. Nothing more nothing less.

If all you wanted to say is "make some categories and more traits and put traits in categories", then I got your idea wrong because I thougt you wanted to put a predesigned backgrounds for the traits . In fact, I think adding categories and more traits is essential for game variety (as most of the people pick the same traits). I still like the trait point system, but it's unbalanced right now. Adding categories and some kind of limit per categorie could help balancing traits.

And then you may think the PPIB idea it's better than choosing traits, but that's a bad idea because it would be unfair. Why would you choose a bad personality?

 

I never seen a bad personality. rough example: A paranoid is probably watching his surrounding more carefully than somebody else, but  constantly on a decent panic level. A depressed character is going better with failure than an optimistic, who mostly expects things to be better than they are. Can you live with that?

Bad psycological aspects do exist. A paranoid will be watching his surroundings more carefully, yes, and he will spend most of the time worrying about something useless like "did i hear something? I should take a look" and 5 minutes after taking a look "did i hear something? I should take a look again". Being paranoid is time consuming and tiresome, it's not just about being panicked. Optimistic and depressed just work the other way around. The pessimist will think "why do I even try?" when he fails, while the optimist will be "I failed this time, but next time I won't fail". Even if a horde eat all your friends and burn your house leaving you with nothing more than some food and a golf club, the optimist will recover sooner from a bad mood than the pessimist. How about angry? what's the benefit of being angry all the time? or grumpy? or scatterbrained?

In some cases, there is no "bright side" of a bad personality.

[Suomiboi]

With the trait system setup as it currently is, negative traits should be negative and the positive side comes from the points you get from that. There's really no need to make the traits multitask. If you want to simulate something like aggressive being more potent in a combat situation, you can choose corresponding traits. Or like with the paranoid situation, you could use the points for the eagle eye trait. This eliminates things like not all paranoid are somehow more perceptive.

More traits for customisation is a given. Also the devs mentioned that hobbies would be something they'd like to add to the system.

[Troblin]

I would greatly approve refusing professions and hobbies altogether into the trait system.