GreenLantern/Familiarity

Problem Statement

I love the crunch of Exalted. It works well in so many ways, with stunts helping explain the cool and the user-customization of charms helping avoid cookie-cutter characters. Still, I do have problems with the use of dice rolling for simple or routinely performed tasks. While the auto-success system allows characters with multiple (7+) dice to 'take an auto success' and avoid dice rolling, in practice, there are many characters that can never hit this plateau. In particular, as 7=4+3, NPC's would need a 3 attribute and a 4 ability (or vice versa) before they could even take advantage of this system. Such an NPC is very well trained in his area, and talented to boot. Everyone else alive, or those working outside of their direct specialty area, are left with rolls of the dice for things.

This isn't a huge problem until you realize what an 'average' person is likely to be rolling on an 'average' roll. Secretaries with 2 Charisma, receiving customers with their 1 point of Presence, isn't that uncommon a situation. Simple village blacksmiths making horseshoes with minimal training have their 3 Strength and 1 Craft (fire) to rely on. In these situations, there's a very real chance of very common failure. At at 30% chance of a die rolling a non-success, The odds of three dice doing so regularly are non-trivial - about 3%. Getting only one success is much more common, admittedly, but still occurs regularly.

This, in and of itself, is a non-issue. The setting could simply note that such simple tasks are difficulty 1, and the secretary and blacksmith would be fine. My problem really stems from the fact that these people do this job day in, and day out. Regularly. They're very used to their things, and get good at it. That's why we can call those actions difficulty 1. The system, however, has no method of accounting for this familiarity, or of the difficulty that such a person would have if taken out of their element.

Those of us with full-time jobs will no doubt be familiar with the 'start up' time of a new employee. It often takes 2-3 months for a new hire, even though well trained by college, for example, to learn the intricacies of the new position. An engineer, for example, might well be able to start engineering quickly, but needs to become familiar with the plans, meet the other designers, and learn about the reasons certain trade-offs were made. More importantly though, this new hire must also learn where the pencils are, who's 'really' in charge, and what the unwritten dress code is. Keep moving such an engineer from company to company and they're going to have a difficult time of things - even though their stats might be identical to another engineer who gets to stay at one place, and learn the lay of things.

A Proposed Solution: Familiarity

Thus, I propose a new system mechanic, familiarity. Similar in many ways to stunt dice, familiarity provides automatic successes on rolls relating to things with which the character is very familiar. In practice, this should never apply to hectic situations such as combat, in which the only constant is the lack of consistency, but is instead intended for things that are done over and over. Examples include:

- Playing a favorite song on one's preferred instrument - Crafting a simple item that has been crafted many times before using these tools - Selling a given product that you've sold many times before - Sailing a channel you've been on many times - Performing a martial arts form in controlled non-combat situation, such as one's dojang - Teaching or discussing a particular aspect of lore that one's studies have focused on

Without the need for specialty dice, then, characters have a means of obtaining simple success on many tasks with which they are familiar. As a rule of thumb, familiarity should not be possible unless an action has been done at least twice - and even then, said action should have occurred within the past month, and in the exact same setting. Further repetitions, especially in similar (but not identical) settings allows the scope of the familiarity to grow. For example, instead of "Making horseshoes using my tools in my village's forge", it might expand to "Making horseshoes in the forges of small southwestern villages".

The number of auto-successes is generally limited to a single auto success, but in extreme situations can hit two auto successes - but only for things which are blindingly mundane to the character. In these situations, the Att+ability=7 character that can normally pull out one auto-success can pull out up to three of them in his particular area of expertise, giving him the ability to routinely handle challenging tasks, making him the well-known "master" of a certain thing in a large region. Other Att+ability=7 characters will likely focus on other products, leading to armorsmiths, weaponsmiths, and other such things spreading throughout the NPC world.

Such a system has very little impact on the game as a whole. It primarily impacts NPC activity, giving them less chance of failure at common tasks, and explains how society at large functions with people doing their little particular job. It reduces the need for copious specialties on NPC's most importantly, and reflects that one's familiarity can wax and wane, unlike specialities which tend to be permanent acquisitions.

Comments and Suggestions

Looks good. Looks logical. I like it. Could we get a little bit more detail on the mechanics, or is this all you're gonna give us? - Han'ya

Well, the issue is that the ST can easily tune it to their own game. It can merely be an aside in a main book, because in general 90% or more of all PC actions won't fall into it. Sure, the archer who continually starts combat with a called shot to the eye might get a familiarity bonus with it (as long as the target isn't riding on horseback, etc), or perhaps the healer working to cure an epidemic across a town might be very used to treating that one disease, but in general this deals with NPC life. One of the 'things' I have about games is that they represent both the abnormal and the normal well - and exalted does a very cool abnormal. Thing is, I always hated that it was tough to explain how normal farmers farmed, and such, because the odds of failure or botch are so high with few dice. Even though a farmer may well have two points of farming, and such, he still also has to do many other things on a day-to-day basis - from talk to people, to fix his barn, to talk about lore over dinner - and these people can be 'good' at certain things, but not actually specialized. Put then on the spot, and they crumble. The same farmer who tells his family the story of how he accomplished greatness X in his teens is going to fumble miserably if asked to do so in front of a king - merely because it's unfamiliar.

Having said all that, the generics I use in my game are as follows:

- After doing an action twice in one week, you get a dot. - Alternately, you can do it weekly for one month. These both assume a very specific familiarity - only this one precise situation. - It takes months of repetition to get a second dot - even if you do something daily. Likely 3-6 months of daily tasks to get the second dot. - If it's something done weekly, it'll take over a full year to get the second dot.

This gives PC's a chance to get a first dot pretty quickly, but the second is far more elusive. I based the times on my own experience at my job, where we found that training simple tasks (enter this data in this form) required less help after they did it alone twice, but getting someone good at the job itself often requires 3-6 months until they're good in general, and feel like a part of the company, rather than "the new guy". -- GreenLantern