Pooling Performing Skills

[Crayon]

Performing skills seem to pool enormously slower than just about everything else in the game. As best as I can tell, at an extreme lowball estimate, it would take at minimum 400 perform emotes to go from 60 to 75 in a performing skill. Most likely the figure is more in the 600+ range.

Assuming that performing a song takes you around 5 emotes, this means performing anywhere from 80 to 120 songs. But, it gets even worse for performance skills that don't really work very well for solo performances. Acting, for example, assuming you have 10 emotes in a performance, is going to take you 40 to 60 plays to go from 60 to 75. And this is all assuming you can even get to 60 in the first place.

As best as I can tell the only reasonable way to increase performing skills more than a couple of points is to spend QP on them while you're still cyan, but this is hugely complicated by inconsistent staffing. One staffer might be happy to let you use QP to purchase all the way to 75, while another might be reluctant to let you train at all or insist that since you didn't have the QP when you created the character that you're trying to use the QP to train beyond their baseline, even if your character is, for example, a retired actor in their 40s or 50s.

I think that performing skills should be tweaked to pool significantly faster from the perform command. Alternatively, I don't think it would be a bad thing at all to allow people to use QP improve performing skills even beyond cyan, since it seems to be unfeasibly difficult to consistently improve them otherwise.

[Myrella]

I'm not sure if I agree or disagree specifically. But I will point out that teaching of course works.

[Crayon]

I'm not sure if I agree or disagree specifically. But I will point out that teaching of course works.

Only if there's somebody with the skill to teach which isn't going to be the case for a lot of performing skills and especially so when Troubadours have had a leadership void, etc.

[Sparkles]

Performing skills are also some of the few skills that you can pool with no material cost (like crafting skills) or risk of physical injury (like combat.)

I can ensure that I Mastered a number of performing skills without ever spending a QP on them in chargen. However, also remember that Metrics affects pooling speeds etc, so the present issue could be needing to address IC Metrics.

There are also some Troubadour specific crafts that check against Performing skills and I think pool (and give a bit of money!) by doing a bit of a performance for NPCs.

[Satoshi]

I can also state as a previous bard and an existing one that the system as it stands is built with the expectation of 'practice' happening. Practice sessions where existing bards all sort of scene and play together, and not just performance in front of people are the expectation with the system.

There also isn't a policy against practicing by yourself, by repeating some simple pmotes privately, either, though botting is, of course, against policy, so you do have to be physically present while you're doing it or else staff should be notified of repetitive emotes being used.

But there's nothing wrong with a few 'Character goes through the scales on her instrument's in a row, and if you spend just a minute or two adding to your pool before heading into a scene for some RP, it adds up over time.

I think it's important to point out that reaching Master or Grandmaster is not something that new characters should be able to achieve overnight. If you are approaching the system trying to simply grind out in a few days what should realistically be taking your character months or years to learn, yes it is going to feel boring and unpleasant, because that is not the goal of the game, nor what it was intended to cater to.

[Crayon]

Is the intention that it take multiple years to master a skill in a game where people can grind crafts to master in a week flat without RPing the craft at all? Or that it be functionally impossible to believably play a character above the age of thirty because the game is designed around the assumption that all new PCs are 18 year old apprentices?

It's not about trying to grind it out so much as it's about trying to play the concept I rolled in as. It's also about a difference in game design ideologies, I think, too. Some games enable characters to start out with an intact, accomplished set of skills and stats. Further progression is usually incremental and minor compared to the starting point. It's nice, but progression isn't the point of the game; roleplay is. You see this with RPGs like Shadowrun and quite a few others. Then you have the more progression-oriented games, like D&D, where every character typically starts at level 1 and is wildly inept, even if the character's concept is, for example, a too-old-for-this-shit retired adventurer in their sixties. Some DMs will finagle with this, but it's rarer than not, and the gap between a level 1 warrior and a level 5 warrior is far, far larger than that between a starting shadowrunner and a shadowrunner who has accumulated 10 karma and 100,000 nuyen.

Progression fantasy is just a super, super weird thing for RP games to focus on super extensively, in my opinion, and it leads to a lot of weird behavior like people power-grinding crafts to 75 in a week or two while telling people with a skill that's useless except for cool points that they're bad and wrong for wanting it to be able to go up from using it in RP at a reasonable rate.

I am telling you as somebody that started with Acting at 36 (Proficient, kind of weird that newbies can only be "good enough" at whatever they want to focus on most, but okay?) that after about ten scenes in which my character taught others about acting, or practiced, I'd pooled enough to go up a single skill level (that I was then charged QP for when I did a bigger QP buy).

Given that pooling performance skills actually requires that you RP, it feels a little disingenuous to say that it's 'grinding it out'? Unless you're spamming one-liners or something. Personally, I do think there's something wrong with repeating the same one-line emote a few times in a row to farm performing pool, and it's frustrating to feel punished for using it with substantial emotes that involve actual performance or practice, and to have basically zero expectation of reaching a fairly high skill level without either making a new character and using QP or abusing perform.

[Sparkles]

Progression fantasy is just a super, super weird thing for RP games to focus on super extensively, in my opinion, and it leads to a lot of weird behavior

I feel like we are ultimately getting a lot of split threads that are kind of focusing around the same topic.

But "progression fantasy" and the desire to improve/expand/build up a character is common in every Roleplay Intensive/Roleplay Enforced game I've ever played. That seemingly many people enjoy experiencing the journey of their character as their roleplay rather than it all occurring in backstory. And I'm not sure it's fair to label that as "weird." Lots of people who imagine themselves in stories want to be the adventurer still out on the adventure.

[astronamika]

Not a bard but maybe a bonus to pooling when you're performing with other troubs would make it more satisfying?

[Crayon]

It's also common for people to spend hours mindlessly grinding in the safest, least costly way possible to get the skills they want to do what they're trying to do with their concept on RPIs. Sometimes before they ever even RP. Thankfully, TI:L has a really cool experience system that integrates roleplay with the skill-gaining process. The issue is that even with this RP-gating effect, it would take me at least ten times as long to increase acting as it would to, say, increase herbalism. I think it's okay to give people stuff to work for but I think it's problematic when you expect people to work for literal OOC years to be good at the things their character is designed to be good at, when other players can be good at the things they're designed to be good at (or even things they're not!) in a much shorter timeframe.

[Starstarfish]

Not a bard but maybe a bonus to pooling when you're performing with other troubs would make it more satisfying?

I do know that Bards performing in rooms already boosts the general RPXP status of the room. But I wonder if the goal should be performing with other Bards or performing in public rooms as ultimately the idea of performances is probably trying to encourage public RP not just two Bards tooting flutes (not a euphemism I swear) only to one another.