The guild meeting is this Sunday 8/12/02 - but you all knew that already.
12:30 for GMs, 1pm for players.
We will be starting the meeting promptly so we don't have to rush things at
the end.  So please be prompt.

Any volunteers to chair the meeting or do you have to put up with me again?


Draft Agendas below, please post anything else you want included.

Also please announce your Adventures.

Cheers, Stephen.

**********************************
GMs Agenda
- Revised Spy into Playtest - Vote Yay/Nay
- Adventures Going Out
  - Michael P - Seven Spies in Ranniterre
  - Martin D - Continuation of Previous Session

**********************************

Guild Meeting Agenda
- BRIEF Precis of Previous Adventures
- Announcement About Spy Playtest (assuming a positive vote)
- Adventures Going Out
- Awards: Smartest
- Awards: Bravest
- Awards: Stupidest
- Awards: Best Death
- Any other business

*************************************


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Are there any comments regarding thief?

Is it possible to vote on this entering playtest?

Mandos
/s


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Looks worthy of playtest to me.

Errol

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mandos@iconz.net [mailto:mandos@iconz.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, 3 December 2002 9:58 a.m.
> To: dq@dq.sf.org.nz
> Subject: Re: [dq] Thief.
> 
> 
> 
> Are there any comments regarding thief?
> 
> Is it possible to vote on this entering playtest?
> 
> Mandos
> /s
> 
> 
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>


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>- Adventures Going Out

William D - On Zarquon's not so Secret Service - Medium (well, the briefing
will be medium), played on tuesdays in darkest Blockhouse Bay. Rep. Lady
Nereth, daughter to The Great Wizard Zarquon the (ahem) Lawful.

For the perusal of GM's- Lady Nereth is clearly of the 'Beautiful as they
are evil' school of fantasy descendants. Her father rules a pack of unruly
nobles featuring some of the 'less pretty' races. Over the mountains to the
west are wealthier kingdoms who they 'regrettably' attacked about a year ago
in response to all the 'unprovoked acts of adverturism'.
The western kingdoms have reputedly been developing some magical weapon but
the spies who found this out were murdered. Go in, find the dark binder,
their plans and yes, the weapon if it happens to be lying arround.

An adventure featuring dark binders, beautiful women (species optional),
natural philosophy and strange metal, lots of strange metal.

William


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"47.1 restrictions ...
When a character is both a spy and a thief, the player may use the better of
the two percentages to perform a given ability."

I think this should be under benefits not restrictions.
This should be mirrored in Spy and should also specify which abilities this
applies to.  From looking at both I believe the list is: Hiding and Pick Locks.

- Do we need this rule for 2 optional abilities?  


Climbing
I don't have the rules here but how does the formula for the Thief Climbing
skill fit in with the Adventuring Skill?
Perhaps refer to the Adventuring skill say that theives get an additional x
+ x per Thief rank to their BC.  Or they have to make checks less often or something.


Stealth Climbing - I don't think the second base chance works, if I had lower
MD than PC then I'd be better off sneaking up the cliff face than climbing normally.
 
How about you have to make a climbing check and a stealth check.  If the climbing
check fails then you fall, if the stealth check fails then you are spotted.
 Maybe an additional penalty to your climbing BC (-20%?).

I haven't gone through all of the abilities and BCs in detail but on a surface
scan these were the only issues that leapt out.

Generally it looks good enough to playtest to me.

Cheers, Stephen.

>
>Are there any comments regarding thief?
>
>Is it possible to vote on this entering playtest?
>
>Mandos
>/s
>
>
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>


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Why has the list suddenly changed to reply to poster rather than reply to
list as the default?

Mandos
/s


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> "47.1 restrictions ...
> When a character is both a spy and a thief, the player may use
> the better of
> the two percentages to perform a given ability."
>
> I think this should be under benefits not restrictions.
> This should be mirrored in Spy and should also specify which
> abilities this
> applies to.  From looking at both I believe the list is: Hiding
> and Pick Locks.
>
> - Do we need this rule for 2 optional abilities?

It was left in as at the time of writing I had not completley detailed all
the skill options. I thought it was better to leave it until Thief and Spy
had been confirmed as Ok.

> Climbing
> I don't have the rules here but how does the formula for the
> Thief Climbing skill fit in with the Adventuring Skill?
> Perhaps refer to the Adventuring skill say that theives get an
> additional x + x per Thief rank to their BC.  Or they have to make checks
less
> often or something.

I wrote it up so that the two skills are completley seperate, hense the
"manmade" structures definition in the Thief Skill. While some crossover may
need to be added between the adventuring skill and the Thief Skill I have
not attempted it here. The intention os that Thief is a climbing skill
specifically to allow you to enter buildings.


> Stealth Climbing - I don't think the second base chance works, if
> I had lower
> MD than PC then I'd be better off sneaking up the cliff face than
> climbing normally.

The Adventuring skill is not subject to the stealth option as it is specific
to the thief climbing. So one could not stealth up a cliff face.

As regards the base chance I agree with that. I think that perhaps a time
restriction or something may balance it without removing the heavier
reliance on perception.


> How about you have to make a climbing check and a stealth check.
> If the climbing
> check fails then you fall, if the stealth check fails then you
> are spotted.
>  Maybe an additional penalty to your climbing BC (-20%?).

I would prefer it not to be based on modifiers or additional checks as they
seem clumsy to me. I will have a play around with options during the
playtest period and make changes prior to the next Guild meeting.

> I haven't gone through all of the abilities and BCs in detail but
> on a surface
> scan these were the only issues that leapt out.
>
> Generally it looks good enough to playtest to me.

I won't be at the Guild meeting, however if proxies are allowed I would like
to register my positive vote to both Spy and Thief for playtesting.

Mandos
/s


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>> "47.1 restrictions ...
>It was left in as at the time of writing I had not completley detailed all

>the skill options. I thought it was better to leave it until Thief and Spy

>had been confirmed as Ok.

In proposing the skills for play test we should be saying that they are ready
to go into the rules.  Make the changes now as if this and the current spy versions
are the final confirmed-ok ones.
If you are not that confident in the proposal then it isn't ready for play test.



>> Climbing
>> I don't have the rules here but how does the formula for the
>> Thief Climbing skill fit in with the Adventuring Skill?
>> Perhaps refer to the Adventuring skill say that theives get an
>> additional x + x per Thief rank to their BC.  Or they have to make checks

>less
>> often or something.
>
>I wrote it up so that the two skills are completley seperate, hense the
>"manmade" structures definition in the Thief Skill. While some crossover may

>need to be added between the adventuring skill and the Thief Skill I have
>not attempted it here. The intention os that Thief is a climbing skill
>specifically to allow you to enter buildings.

I have a problem with the natural vs constructed climbing skills.  
What does a building partially carved out of a cliff-face count as?
If I have Adventure: Climbing but not Thief:Climbing then what is my chance
of scaling the castle wall (a man made structure that bears a lot of similarity
to a cliff face)?
I vote to KIS it.
Climbing BC = x * MD + y * PS + z * Climbing Rank + w * Thief Rank (assuming
Climbing Skill) +/- GM Modifer for conditions.
Thief: Climbing also allows you to use your Stealth skill while climbing (with
standard Stealth BC and modifiers).
Possibly Thieves get to climb Rank floors of a building per base chance check.



>> Stealth Climbing - ...
>> How about you have to make a climbing check and a stealth check.
>> If the climbing
>> check fails then you fall, if the stealth check fails then you
>> are spotted.
>>  Maybe an additional penalty to your climbing BC (-20%?).
>
>I would prefer it not to be based on modifiers or additional checks as they

>seem clumsy to me. I will have a play around with options during the
>playtest period and make changes prior to the next Guild meeting.

Agree on no additional modifiers.  But I think 2 BCs and 2 rolls is the simplest
approach.
That way Stealth and Climbing each have their own BCs and situational modifiers.
 If you want to do both at once then roll twice, once against each skill BC.

If you're awesome at stealth then sneaking up a wall is no harder than climbing
up it normally.  If you're awesome at climbing then sneaking up a wall is no
harder than sneaking along the street.  But for most of us it increases the
risk as there are no 2 chances at ballsing it up.

>
>Mandos
>/s

Cheers, Stephen.


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mandos@iconz.net wrote:

> Why has the list suddenly changed to reply to poster rather than reply to
> list as the default?

It hasn't changed for me.

>I wrote it up so that the two skills are completley seperate, hense the
>"manmade" structures definition in the Thief Skill. While some crossover may
>need to be added between the adventuring skill and the Thief Skill I have
>not attempted it here. The intention os that Thief is a climbing skill
>specifically to allow you to enter buildings.
>  
>

It seems unreasonable to claim that it is impossible within the game to 
stealth-climb a cliff. I suggest that there simply be a base chance 
penalty to thief-climbing on non-buildings, and to adventure-climbing on 
buildings.

What about trees? Tree climbing would quite often be of use for breaking 
and entering, so I suggest that they be included in thief.


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> In proposing the skills for play test we should be saying that
> they are ready to go into the rules.  Make the changes now as if this and
the
> current spy versions are the final confirmed-ok ones.
> If you are not that confident in the proposal then it isn't ready
> for play test.

Surely playtesting is there to find the issues in the rules to assist in
ironing out the bugs.

In terms of the skill I have not heard anything seriously amiss other than
climbing. I would say it is definatly ready for playtesting and I would not
expect anything more than minor tweaks before full inclusion in the rules.

Mandos
/s


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It appears that the climbing skill is the one that is promoting discussion.

My aims with the skill was to make thief a primarily urban experiance and I
wanted to limit the thief climbing ability to an urban area.

My thoughts were to limit it to manmade structures only as part of the thief
skill. Obviously if you wish to climb a tree, or are wanting to climb a
house of hards or just about anything else that GM's come up with, then the
GM will be able to assign you a modifier to the climbing skill or will make
the call if you can do it.

I did not intend the skill to cover all circumstances, nor am I keen to
create a base chance for each varient.

I do agree with the additions of stealth to the stealth climbing skill,
however I do think that it is uniqly thiefy and should not be part of the
adventuring skill. For those who have experiance with climbing quietly into
a house and climbing up a rock face these are very different things
requiring very different skills.


I will be on holiday for the days leading up to the Guild meeting but I will
make some changes tonight to tidy up this option to make it ready for
playtesting this session.

Mandos
/s


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For me, Michael W and Stephen's emails have their email addresses as the
"Reply to:", others have the list's.

Do you two have the "Reply to:" explicitly set on your accounts?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mandos@iconz.net [mailto:mandos@iconz.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, 3 December 2002 2:12 p.m.
> To: dq@dq.sf.org.nz
> Subject: Re: [dq] Thief.
> 
> 
> 
> Why has the list suddenly changed to reply to poster rather 
> than reply to
> list as the default?
> 
> Mandos
> /s
> 
> 
> -- to unsubscribe notify mailto:dq-request@dq.sf.org.nz --
>


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> For me, Michael W and Stephen's emails have their email addresses as the
> "Reply to:", others have the list's.
> 
> Do you two have the "Reply to:" explicitly set on your accounts?

Ahhh yep that is the same for me as well :-)

What are you two up to?

Mandos
/s


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mandos@iconz.net wrote:

>>For me, Michael W and Stephen's emails have their email addresses as the
>>"Reply to:", others have the list's.
>>
>>Do you two have the "Reply to:" explicitly set on your accounts?
>>    
>>
>
>Ahhh yep that is the same for me as well :-)
>
>What are you two up to?
>
>Mandos
>/s
>
I've just changed my 'reply to' to be blank for this message, to see if 
it makes a difference.


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> I've just changed my 'reply to' to be blank for this message, to see if 
> it makes a difference.

Yep that fixes it :-)

Mandos
/s


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I guess that's a difference in how we view the Thief skill.  I see it as the
skill of acquisition of property from those unwilling to relinquish it.
Most thieves operate in urban areas because it's easier - more targets.  But
many of the skills apply to crypt raiding, highway banditry, and taking priceless
gems from dragon's lairs.  Most of which don't take place in cities.

Differentiating between Climbing of buildings and climbing of everything else
seems to me to be adding un-necessary complexity.  If we wanted realism then
Climbing could become a major skill of its own with sub-areas based on what
you are climbing, what gear you are using, who else you're climbing with etc.

As far as DQ is concerned climbing is climbing.  Skill in it certainly helps.
 It is a skill very applicable to certain types of Thief and it seems reasonable
they should be better at it.  And the rest can be dealt with by GM modifiers.



>
>My aims with the skill was to make thief a primarily urban experiance and I

>wanted to limit the thief climbing ability to an urban area.
>
>
>Mandos
>/s


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