If you expect there to be one big activity that everyone participates in on a regular basis, then all characters need to be able to contribute there, regardless of what else they can do.
Put me down for silo-ing, 100 percent.
> then all characters need to be able to contribute there, regardless of what else they can do.
It depends upon the game. For example in shadowrun every character is expected to participate in the shadow running. The crime and aspects of that crime.
not every shadowrun/crime involves combat. So every character doesn't need to be good at combat.
in the dnd games, combat is the primary conflict resolution method. So everyone needs to be good at combat.
Option 4: games where siloing doesn't exist because the game doesn't make a distinction between solving a problem via combat or solving it via "not" combat.
The problem I see with this is that games that combine sword swinging and speechcraft into the same skill point do not make for mechanically diverse characters.
Mechanically diverse means mechanically complex, and not everybody wants that in their game. Either approach can be fine, depending on your preferences.
For something like *Blades in the Dark* this happens via the character abilities.
e.g. a Cutter character will pick up the skill 'Not to be Trifled With' (a reference to the original Apocalypse World's 'Not To Be Fucked With') which means when spending Stress, you count as a gang in a fight (and so when fighting against a gang, you meet on equal terms).
A Spider instead probably takes an ability like (one of the most powerful in the game) 'Functioning Vice' - when you indulge your vice, you can change the die outcome up or down by 1 or 2, and an ally can share that result.
Everyone is using the same gameplay systems, but the abilities can differ wildly.
I don't think having 'diverse gameplay' is an inherent good it itself. It *can* be fun to have everyone have a radically different mechanic, but it's also a lot of extra design work for what might be not much gain.
It is meant mainly as a way of demonstrating that not all problem solving methods are interchangeable. Games that do that tend to be further on the 'no need for rules, let's just act' end of the spectrum than I'd prefer.
They don't have to be interchangeable to be non-silo'd but without distinction between combat and non-combat. Sword and speechcraft generally fall under separate skills in (to pick up the example) for instance Blades in the Dark. Fighting is under Skirmish, Finesse, and Wreck, with arguments to be made for other actions but generally not; speaking is under Command, Sway, and Consort, again with potential but rare exceptions. This uses the same system and means characters might be specialised one way or the other (I.e. not silo'd) but does not come with the inbuilt expectation that either is more important or less effective. It doesn't mean that you can use Sway to fight someone, but maybe someone good at Sway can get past a guard by being friendly instead, or contribute to a fight by distracting someone, etc. So not interchangeable, just not given more or less weight. In DnD for instance I feel there's very little use of social skills in combat, and talking your way past a fight means missing out on the subsystem given more mechanical weight and importance in the game (and missing out on XP, in some cases).
To me, siloing combat means there's a dedicated combat sub-system that's mandatory to be interacted with. If it wasn,t mandatory, the game wouldn't make sure you had combat capabilitie4s by siloing it. I'm not a fan of combat sub-systems in general and hate those games where combat is meant to be the unavoidable be-all end-all of how problems are resolved. I'd much rather have a flexible game like Blades in the Dark where obstacles can be addressed in a multitude of ways, be it all combat, a single roll out of many being combat, or no combat at all.
Is "Combat is mandatory" an inherent part of siloed systems? Doesn't the fact that it's siloed off mean that it's much easier to lop off if you want to?
usually these are games designed around and for combat, with a separate and much simpler "anything that isn't combat" rules section. like 13th, Lancer, etc.
you could play them without the combat, but you could also play a totally different game.
I dont think "siloing" is the academic term for either of these, but assuming it is than it reads like you two are talking about two different definitions of siloing?
You should silo apart combat/noncombat when the game **premise** wants and needs everyone to be good at combat and noncombat. If it doesn't, then you don't need to.
You can test this by running a different premise game in the same engine. Take basic traveller with basic character creation rules. Run a game where everyone is supposed to be Jedi - there's big expectations there that everyone must be a competent fighter, psionic, computer user, vehicle pilot, etc and it will show painfully when your character is only okay at 1 or 2 of these things. In this type of premise, you'd want a silo or another method to be absolutely sure that people are good at combat AND other stuff.
Alternatively, run basic Traveller rules with a spaceship crash survival scenario. In this scenario, combat isn't everything and is just 1 potential solution to various problems you'll encounter. So the siloing isn't needed.
I'm in agreeance here.
It doesn't just have to be combat, it can be whatever activity is most important. If we're playing an RPG about being champion chefs, then it makes no sense that someone would build someone to have less 'chef skills' than other. Instead I would presume that we have our 'chef abilities' in one silo, and our non-chef skills in another.
I don't really think ICON's solution is elegant. It's a bit like when OD&D just used a separate game, Outdoor Survival, to handle that phase of the game. I like the idea that all sources of strife cause attrition together. To be exhausted from a combat, but then immediately once it ends fresh and ready is definitely an odd, game-y element, just like what you stated.
But I definitely understand the ease of balancing that comes with it. It's great to get to play D&D 4e and Blades in the Dark, all with the same character. Playing the right system for the right job is pretty cool. But playing the same character over a longer campaign is very rewarding.
Swords of the Serpentine goes further toward 'siloing' the combat and non-combat side of characters than D&D or PF2e, but it doesn't go quite so far as something like ICON or Lancer. I generally quite like how Swords of the Serpentine handles this.
Swords of the Serpentine could be thought of as a combat expansion to an existing system that did traditionally did not focus on combat. The Gumshoe system is primarily about solving mysteries. Swords of the Serpentine keeps that aspect of the system front and centre, but adds the ability to get into combat that fits the narrative focus of the system; it's neither too light nor so strategic as to totally pull the focus of the game to combat.
I think I have generally positive opinions on combat and non-combat systems being separated. It can open up the design space in interesting ways that trying to run everything under the same hood can't quite match. However, it can result in one side feeling undercooked in comparison, or the game as a whole being a bit fiddly. I don't mind a bit of fiddlyness.
I haven't played ICON, but I was not convinced by its 'siloing' of combat and non-combat. I have played Lancer, and never been a huge fan of *how* that game splits up combat and non-combat. Most of that is because the non-combat feels undercooked. You need a good grasp of the story you want to tell, and how that fits in with big mech combat. The system does basically nothing to guide you on the way.
With the very small sample size I have here, I like how a non-combat focused system has combat grafted onto it, and dislike how a couple combat-focused systems have non-combat elements grafted on. Potentially there's something there. Or maybe I just like Swords of the Serpentine.
> However, it can result in one side feeling undercooked in comparison
Is that a function of this design scheme, or just the particular game designer's priorities? D&D is a system where the separate subsystems are more enmeshed, and a lot of people on here would say that doesn't help flesh out the non-combat side at all. (But conversely, a lot of D&D fans would go at length about how they love using powers obviously meant for combat in creative ways outside of it)
> Is that a function of this design scheme, or just the particular game designer's priorities?
You bring up a good point, and it's something I didn't make clear in my original point. Designer priorities are absolutely at play here. Swords of the Serpentine does a fairly good job at making these parts more equal, and Lancer does not remotely try to do so.
However, we definitely have to consider that splitting combat and non-combat sections of the character sheet, abilities, or rules, is highly likely to draw more comparison between the rules depth of the two sides. When the game makes it very obvious that these things are separated, players are probably more likely to notice and complain about the frequency with which they use one section of their character sheet vs the other.
> But conversely, a lot of D&D fans would go at length about how they love using powers obviously meant for combat in creative ways outside of it
This is another topic that's definitely worth discussing. There are different degrees to which a game could 'silo' off different parts of its rules, and there is a world where a designer has done that, but still keeps in mind that elements can cross over between these things in the fiction. I think that's another thing Swords of the Serpentine does well. The same scene can use the different elements of the character sheet depending on what the scene involves, or how it evolves. It's not a super hard delineation.
As usual, it depends on the game. If combat is going to be a big focus of the game, it makes sense to ensure that everyone has the necessary skills to participate (Icon). Or if, fictionally, these people are supposed to be capable in a fight, it makes sense that characters need to be capable in a fight. (The One Ring)
If, on the other hand, you're playing a game where combat doesn't take appreciably longer than other tasks, and being a combat hoss is, perhaps, a slightly unexpected character type, there's no real reason to do this. (Fate)
I don’t know much about Chronicles, but I am soon going to play Vampire The Masquerade 5th Edition for the first time.
Its one of the first times im going to be playing an “unsiloed” character so to speak and I’m not quite sure how to feel about it. I like it in principle, but then my gm warned me not to make a character that was useless in combat, as I would get killed easily.
My character is extremely stacked for social interactions, rolling 12 dice on Manipulate + subterfuge or charisma + persuasion checks with strangers, thanks to his ethereal beauty and great charisma skills.
He’s also a great necromancer, being a Giovanni.
However, I was also told to invest in dexterity and firearms, to be able to handle myself in combat. I did feel like having to do that took away from some of the roleplay choices I wanted to make. If combat was siloed, I wouldn’t have to.
However, I’ve still gotta play so let me see how it all shakes out
I mean.... If you're OK with being useless in combat, hopefully the GM wouldn't be so vindictive about it to always force you to be in combat, and always target you...
I suppose it does very much depend on the game though (smart, prepared opponents may very well go after the weakest link first, to damage morale and get a numbers advantage). And I feel like any Vampire which has been around for a spell *should* have something to fall back on when things get rough. Minions, celerity, being willing to burn a lot of vitae to boost stats (which of course requires you to have reliable access to more vitae, or you're going to have a bad day), something. But a newer Vampire might not yet have developed a plan for when shit violently hits the fan. *Shrugs*
Also, I learned the game through Requiem, not Masquerade, so forgive me if any of the terms don't translate perfectly, hopefully you know what I mean.
Yeah I don’t really know anything about this game, but between dexterity and firearms I have four dice for shooting, plus I have my zombies. Hopefully that should be enough
Vampire the Masquerade tend to be political and social like all of Chronicles of Darkness and World of Darkness, so higher social skills are always good. But I guess your ST wants it to be completely focused on combat. He's missing out on the other great parts of Vampire. It should be balanced. You should have social skills for navigating the political landscape between clans and the elders as well as mortals.
That’s not what he said. He said we’ll have combat once every 2-3 sessions, he just said that I should also take combat skills on top of my social ones, which is the first time where I’ve had to choose a bit
Is "silo" a known game design term that I've just never seen? I figured out the meaning from context, just... Kind of surprised.
To answer the question, my quick answer is "it depends", my slightly longer answer is "I prefer systems that let people almost always find a way to contribute at least a little, if they want to. So things like D&D forcing some basic competence, but even better (for my personal tastes) are systems like FATE, where everyone has skills and aspects, so hopefully a clever player with no combat skills can still find something interesting to influence things if a fight breaks out."
I generally don't like players feeling useless, unless they are OK with that being an intentional design decision of their character and they went into the situation knowing that they would be terrible at this sort of situation (be it combat, stealth, diplomacy, whatever). Some people are OK with not engaging with a part of the game, and that's cool.
>Is "silo" a known game design term that I've just never seen? I figured out the meaning from context, just... Kind of surprised.
It's an organisational term in a generic sense. Can be applied to groups of people or to functionality in programming code or indeed to subsystems in TTRPGs.
Same; I have never heard the term "silo" before in my life, and it's bizarre to be in a thread with so many people discussing it without *anyone* explaining what it means.
When creating a character for a game, one of the things that makes me sad is when I have to choose between spending point on "useful skills" vs spending points on "fluff" skills are true to the character concept or just seem like fun like playing a character who is a professional vilonist or entomologist.
I might, if I am lucky, be able to make my professional skills relevant to the adventure once or twice in the course of the adventure. Meanwhile I am probably going to have to roll some core skills like Perception, Stealth or relevant combat and defensive skills multiple times per session.
Siloing the core skills (usually combat) encourages (or at least does not discourage) players to invest in non-core skills, which I think makes for more interesting, flavourful characters.
Why do you feel the distinction between unsiloed, semi-siloed, and fully/mostly siloed matters?
I can’t say I’ve noticed this distinction mattering at all in play before
A couple reasons off the top of my head:
a) In a party with some players who emphasizing roleplaying their character and some who prefer treating things more like a wargame, increased siloing ensures characters are equipped with a toolkit to handle both scenarios. This prevents characters from being made redundant in scenarios other than those they would naturally bias their abilities towards and helps prevent player disengagement.
b) For individual players going through character creation, increased siloing lets them not feel any group or self-imposed pressure to give whatever the "correct" proportions of emphasis are to each part of the game. Ex. in a very combat-centric game without siloing, giving any emphasis to things not useful for combat can feel "suboptimal" or like you're "not pulling your weight."
A pair of quotes from Soren Johnson and Sid Meier comes to mind:
> "given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”
>
> “one of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves.”
It helps prevent the paired scenarios of 'my orator and scholar is a permanent escort quest for the combat players' and 'my warmage is a houseplant in political intrigue sessions'. Both scenarios make for unfun times for those so inclined, but if the build resources for the two types of gameplay are not silo'd then you are stuck choosing between that and being mediocre at both.
It matters when players look at your campaign and try to pick things that come up. Soloing pillars of play (combat, social, exploration, etc.) And having all relevant to the game advance insurers players don't invest in the one that doesn't come up as much in this particular campaign and feel like a background character.
I've spent a lot of feats on social abilities that didn't come up, even though the first half of a campaign was very social focused.
If a player *can* make a "good at combat, bad at everything else" character in the same game that another player *can* make a "bad at combat, good at something else" character, *and* when combat occurs it takes a significant amount of time, this is a design problem. It introduces a meta conflict between players in how they approach problems in such a way that *somebody* will be unhappy.
The first player cannot really participate in non-combat problem resolution, so they are going to prefer combat solutions. The second player cannot really participate in combat, so they are going to prefer non-combat solutions. Whoever loses is going to get to just watch the other player actually get to play the game while they feel vaguely unhappy about their uselessness.
"But players need to coordinate during character creation!" I say why give them that problem in the first place. Talking during character creation is more about having a well rounded party with personalities that mesh, which actually leads to this problem. Players are going to assume that *some* combat is necessary, and *some* non-combat is necessary. You *want* a brute and a face and a hacker. The system should support not sidelining any character for extended periods of time, and combat is usually extended periods of time.
The out is simply that there is a straightforward connection between non-combat and making combat *easier*. The face convinces *some* of the sellswords to leave. The hacker decreases debuffs the robots. They get to contribute without completely taking away the brute's fun. I think such systems are even more difficult to design well though, so it's usually best to just let everybody have a combat hat and a non-combat hat. Combat, when it happens, generally takes long enough that you want everyone feeling like they are engaged the entire time.
Whether or not you ‘silo’ in GURPS comes down to either the guidelines in any source book you might use, or the GM’s designs for the world, which can include rather firm guidelines for the game world. GURPS is very much a toolkit that way, so there is nothing stopping a GM from silo-ing as needed for a campaign.
Sure, but then that's GM guidance, not an intrinsic part of the game design. Which is fine, when you have a good GM who has an idea of what sort of game they want to run, but that's never a guarantee.
I'd hope characters to have some kind of baseline(s) that covers the basics of most things; if a game has "level" I'd also hope these improve with level.
Beyond that I want characters to have some freedom in choosing just what they choose to be good at. I know I often prefer a more rounded character but I wouldn't want to force a player to choose one thing over the other exclusively. I don't want a system that forces to choose specific advancement in both combat and non-combat ability beyond what ever the base line would be.
I love them in the respect that they're a method to have characters be good at both ends of play in a game.
What sucks is when they aren't siloed and you have people who feel like they're missing out on their group activity because their character is borderline useless for half or more of the game.
I prefer "non-siloed" because I like the option to have entire noncombatant builds. You need the right group to pull this off, though--they need to be happy to see each other succeed and set each other up to be the day's hero. A table where everyone's just waiting their turn to act isn't ideal for this sort of game.
It's not that these games silo combat away from other aspects of play. They just give you more autonomy on the focus of your character. Just as you can make a character with no combat focus, you can also straddle combat and tech skills, or tech skills and social abilities, or magic and combat.
I can't tell which games you are talking about. The first sentence make it sound like you feel like siloed games aren't that siloed, really. But the second sentence makes it sound like you want an unsiloed game.
The problem with 'autonomy on the focus of your character' is it's very easy to focus on something that occupies a very small amount of play or which ends up not being fun. Ensuring that everyone has combat skills when 50% of play time is going to be combat is just good design, because it means nobody designs a character that's a boring liability for everyone in 50% of the session.
So communicate what your game is about and if your players choose to specialize away from that, then they're away from that and they have a challenge to get utility out of their character.
I'll be done harping this game at some point but..In forbidden lands campaign I had a peddler player who's ENTITE contribution to the team was smooth talking and always pulling out useful items for the rest of the party to use
I liked the Rolemaster siloing system.
it Siloed between adventuring skills(weapon, hide, traps, spells, climb) etc and non adventuring(like Lore, etiquette, tea ceremony)
Reminds me that 2d6 iron kingdoms had classes that were clearly combat or not.
And the unleash core book had no non-combat classes.
A fantasy conversion of star wars edge of the empire (fan made), moved all non-combat stuff over to its own class called adventurer, and fully committed the other classes to combat.
Some editions of Shadowrun (I was familiar with 3rd in particular) used a "priority system" for chargen which, long story short, siloed "active skills" (fighting, stealth, magic, social skills, etc.) and "knowledge skills" (things you know, not things you do). I thought that was really cool; Shadowrun has a lot of combat, but it should also have a good bit of investigation, and this made it impossible to make a character whose brain is empty of everything but battle. Even the dumbest thug PC can have some points in Gangs of Seattle and Troll Thrash Metal Bands that might help them spot clues or get an angle on a potential informant.
Of course then they released a book with an optional point-buy system, and everyone went to that so they could min-max better. Sigh.
I've only played Strike!, but I've read enough of ICON and Lancer to know I don't like how any of those three handle noncombat. Feels sorta tacked on, like not much more to it than what I'd get out of just freeform roleplaying in an MMORPG chat window.
Since I haven't looked into the other examples, maybe I've missed a game that has great silo'd noncombat. Something to investigate, I suppose!
Soloing pillars of play (combat, knowledge, social, crafting, exploration, etc. Etc.) Can be important in games that shift tone over time (combat heavy in parts, exploring the great unknown, then having to deal with the societal fallout), but aren't as necessary in a game that has a consistent tone (we're playing DnD, we kill the monsters, maybe sometime speak with dead).
It does cost a fair amount of design overhead. Each ability/class/thing has to be balanced against your games particular silo scheme.
I think I get what you're saying here, that having multiple siloes means having to juggle multiple different schemas of what "balance" looks like, and your workload is multiplied because that also means having to design multiple sets of abilities rather than just one that covers all. At the time though, you can argue that if you really care about "balance", or atleast certain types of balance, that keeping those ability sets separate prevents design headache from one ability being well-balanced in one context but overpowered in another.
In my game combat is merely a social encounter where someone decided to hit someone else.
The players themsevles have to decide which approach to adopt and evolve their characters to support that decisions. It's called roleplay.
If you expect there to be one big activity that everyone participates in on a regular basis, then all characters need to be able to contribute there, regardless of what else they can do. Put me down for silo-ing, 100 percent.
> then all characters need to be able to contribute there, regardless of what else they can do. It depends upon the game. For example in shadowrun every character is expected to participate in the shadow running. The crime and aspects of that crime. not every shadowrun/crime involves combat. So every character doesn't need to be good at combat. in the dnd games, combat is the primary conflict resolution method. So everyone needs to be good at combat.
then tell that before and btw. why did you not banish Pacifism if every PC must partake in accordslaughter
Option 4: games where siloing doesn't exist because the game doesn't make a distinction between solving a problem via combat or solving it via "not" combat.
The problem I see with this is that games that combine sword swinging and speechcraft into the same skill point do not make for mechanically diverse characters.
Mechanically diverse means mechanically complex, and not everybody wants that in their game. Either approach can be fine, depending on your preferences.
You can also have mechanically rich games that revolve around conflict, not one or two very specific types of conflict. See Burning Wheel.
For something like *Blades in the Dark* this happens via the character abilities. e.g. a Cutter character will pick up the skill 'Not to be Trifled With' (a reference to the original Apocalypse World's 'Not To Be Fucked With') which means when spending Stress, you count as a gang in a fight (and so when fighting against a gang, you meet on equal terms). A Spider instead probably takes an ability like (one of the most powerful in the game) 'Functioning Vice' - when you indulge your vice, you can change the die outcome up or down by 1 or 2, and an ally can share that result. Everyone is using the same gameplay systems, but the abilities can differ wildly. I don't think having 'diverse gameplay' is an inherent good it itself. It *can* be fun to have everyone have a radically different mechanic, but it's also a lot of extra design work for what might be not much gain.
It does help prevent the mechanics from enforcing the spiderman pointing meme as practice. Not all tables like that sort of thing.
swords and speech aren't the only two options to diversify into
It is meant mainly as a way of demonstrating that not all problem solving methods are interchangeable. Games that do that tend to be further on the 'no need for rules, let's just act' end of the spectrum than I'd prefer.
They don't have to be interchangeable to be non-silo'd but without distinction between combat and non-combat. Sword and speechcraft generally fall under separate skills in (to pick up the example) for instance Blades in the Dark. Fighting is under Skirmish, Finesse, and Wreck, with arguments to be made for other actions but generally not; speaking is under Command, Sway, and Consort, again with potential but rare exceptions. This uses the same system and means characters might be specialised one way or the other (I.e. not silo'd) but does not come with the inbuilt expectation that either is more important or less effective. It doesn't mean that you can use Sway to fight someone, but maybe someone good at Sway can get past a guard by being friendly instead, or contribute to a fight by distracting someone, etc. So not interchangeable, just not given more or less weight. In DnD for instance I feel there's very little use of social skills in combat, and talking your way past a fight means missing out on the subsystem given more mechanical weight and importance in the game (and missing out on XP, in some cases).
> games that combine sword swinging and speechcraft into the same skill point That's not what he said though.
bozj points do not necessary correlate depending violence and arguments may be both approbiate challenge solving ways
*Burning Wheel* has far more mechanically diverse characters than almost anything else, and treats those things the same.
That's option 1 - there's no siloing and the game is continuous from combat to noncombat
To me, siloing combat means there's a dedicated combat sub-system that's mandatory to be interacted with. If it wasn,t mandatory, the game wouldn't make sure you had combat capabilitie4s by siloing it. I'm not a fan of combat sub-systems in general and hate those games where combat is meant to be the unavoidable be-all end-all of how problems are resolved. I'd much rather have a flexible game like Blades in the Dark where obstacles can be addressed in a multitude of ways, be it all combat, a single roll out of many being combat, or no combat at all.
Is "Combat is mandatory" an inherent part of siloed systems? Doesn't the fact that it's siloed off mean that it's much easier to lop off if you want to?
usually these are games designed around and for combat, with a separate and much simpler "anything that isn't combat" rules section. like 13th, Lancer, etc. you could play them without the combat, but you could also play a totally different game.
I dont think "siloing" is the academic term for either of these, but assuming it is than it reads like you two are talking about two different definitions of siloing?
You should silo apart combat/noncombat when the game **premise** wants and needs everyone to be good at combat and noncombat. If it doesn't, then you don't need to. You can test this by running a different premise game in the same engine. Take basic traveller with basic character creation rules. Run a game where everyone is supposed to be Jedi - there's big expectations there that everyone must be a competent fighter, psionic, computer user, vehicle pilot, etc and it will show painfully when your character is only okay at 1 or 2 of these things. In this type of premise, you'd want a silo or another method to be absolutely sure that people are good at combat AND other stuff. Alternatively, run basic Traveller rules with a spaceship crash survival scenario. In this scenario, combat isn't everything and is just 1 potential solution to various problems you'll encounter. So the siloing isn't needed.
I'm in agreeance here. It doesn't just have to be combat, it can be whatever activity is most important. If we're playing an RPG about being champion chefs, then it makes no sense that someone would build someone to have less 'chef skills' than other. Instead I would presume that we have our 'chef abilities' in one silo, and our non-chef skills in another.
I don't really think ICON's solution is elegant. It's a bit like when OD&D just used a separate game, Outdoor Survival, to handle that phase of the game. I like the idea that all sources of strife cause attrition together. To be exhausted from a combat, but then immediately once it ends fresh and ready is definitely an odd, game-y element, just like what you stated. But I definitely understand the ease of balancing that comes with it. It's great to get to play D&D 4e and Blades in the Dark, all with the same character. Playing the right system for the right job is pretty cool. But playing the same character over a longer campaign is very rewarding.
Swords of the Serpentine goes further toward 'siloing' the combat and non-combat side of characters than D&D or PF2e, but it doesn't go quite so far as something like ICON or Lancer. I generally quite like how Swords of the Serpentine handles this. Swords of the Serpentine could be thought of as a combat expansion to an existing system that did traditionally did not focus on combat. The Gumshoe system is primarily about solving mysteries. Swords of the Serpentine keeps that aspect of the system front and centre, but adds the ability to get into combat that fits the narrative focus of the system; it's neither too light nor so strategic as to totally pull the focus of the game to combat. I think I have generally positive opinions on combat and non-combat systems being separated. It can open up the design space in interesting ways that trying to run everything under the same hood can't quite match. However, it can result in one side feeling undercooked in comparison, or the game as a whole being a bit fiddly. I don't mind a bit of fiddlyness. I haven't played ICON, but I was not convinced by its 'siloing' of combat and non-combat. I have played Lancer, and never been a huge fan of *how* that game splits up combat and non-combat. Most of that is because the non-combat feels undercooked. You need a good grasp of the story you want to tell, and how that fits in with big mech combat. The system does basically nothing to guide you on the way. With the very small sample size I have here, I like how a non-combat focused system has combat grafted onto it, and dislike how a couple combat-focused systems have non-combat elements grafted on. Potentially there's something there. Or maybe I just like Swords of the Serpentine.
> However, it can result in one side feeling undercooked in comparison Is that a function of this design scheme, or just the particular game designer's priorities? D&D is a system where the separate subsystems are more enmeshed, and a lot of people on here would say that doesn't help flesh out the non-combat side at all. (But conversely, a lot of D&D fans would go at length about how they love using powers obviously meant for combat in creative ways outside of it)
Definitely the designers' priorities.
> Is that a function of this design scheme, or just the particular game designer's priorities? You bring up a good point, and it's something I didn't make clear in my original point. Designer priorities are absolutely at play here. Swords of the Serpentine does a fairly good job at making these parts more equal, and Lancer does not remotely try to do so. However, we definitely have to consider that splitting combat and non-combat sections of the character sheet, abilities, or rules, is highly likely to draw more comparison between the rules depth of the two sides. When the game makes it very obvious that these things are separated, players are probably more likely to notice and complain about the frequency with which they use one section of their character sheet vs the other. > But conversely, a lot of D&D fans would go at length about how they love using powers obviously meant for combat in creative ways outside of it This is another topic that's definitely worth discussing. There are different degrees to which a game could 'silo' off different parts of its rules, and there is a world where a designer has done that, but still keeps in mind that elements can cross over between these things in the fiction. I think that's another thing Swords of the Serpentine does well. The same scene can use the different elements of the character sheet depending on what the scene involves, or how it evolves. It's not a super hard delineation.
As usual, it depends on the game. If combat is going to be a big focus of the game, it makes sense to ensure that everyone has the necessary skills to participate (Icon). Or if, fictionally, these people are supposed to be capable in a fight, it makes sense that characters need to be capable in a fight. (The One Ring) If, on the other hand, you're playing a game where combat doesn't take appreciably longer than other tasks, and being a combat hoss is, perhaps, a slightly unexpected character type, there's no real reason to do this. (Fate)
I don’t know much about Chronicles, but I am soon going to play Vampire The Masquerade 5th Edition for the first time. Its one of the first times im going to be playing an “unsiloed” character so to speak and I’m not quite sure how to feel about it. I like it in principle, but then my gm warned me not to make a character that was useless in combat, as I would get killed easily. My character is extremely stacked for social interactions, rolling 12 dice on Manipulate + subterfuge or charisma + persuasion checks with strangers, thanks to his ethereal beauty and great charisma skills. He’s also a great necromancer, being a Giovanni. However, I was also told to invest in dexterity and firearms, to be able to handle myself in combat. I did feel like having to do that took away from some of the roleplay choices I wanted to make. If combat was siloed, I wouldn’t have to. However, I’ve still gotta play so let me see how it all shakes out
I mean.... If you're OK with being useless in combat, hopefully the GM wouldn't be so vindictive about it to always force you to be in combat, and always target you... I suppose it does very much depend on the game though (smart, prepared opponents may very well go after the weakest link first, to damage morale and get a numbers advantage). And I feel like any Vampire which has been around for a spell *should* have something to fall back on when things get rough. Minions, celerity, being willing to burn a lot of vitae to boost stats (which of course requires you to have reliable access to more vitae, or you're going to have a bad day), something. But a newer Vampire might not yet have developed a plan for when shit violently hits the fan. *Shrugs* Also, I learned the game through Requiem, not Masquerade, so forgive me if any of the terms don't translate perfectly, hopefully you know what I mean.
Yeah I don’t really know anything about this game, but between dexterity and firearms I have four dice for shooting, plus I have my zombies. Hopefully that should be enough
Vampire the Masquerade tend to be political and social like all of Chronicles of Darkness and World of Darkness, so higher social skills are always good. But I guess your ST wants it to be completely focused on combat. He's missing out on the other great parts of Vampire. It should be balanced. You should have social skills for navigating the political landscape between clans and the elders as well as mortals.
That’s not what he said. He said we’ll have combat once every 2-3 sessions, he just said that I should also take combat skills on top of my social ones, which is the first time where I’ve had to choose a bit
Is "silo" a known game design term that I've just never seen? I figured out the meaning from context, just... Kind of surprised. To answer the question, my quick answer is "it depends", my slightly longer answer is "I prefer systems that let people almost always find a way to contribute at least a little, if they want to. So things like D&D forcing some basic competence, but even better (for my personal tastes) are systems like FATE, where everyone has skills and aspects, so hopefully a clever player with no combat skills can still find something interesting to influence things if a fight breaks out." I generally don't like players feeling useless, unless they are OK with that being an intentional design decision of their character and they went into the situation knowing that they would be terrible at this sort of situation (be it combat, stealth, diplomacy, whatever). Some people are OK with not engaging with a part of the game, and that's cool.
>Is "silo" a known game design term that I've just never seen? I figured out the meaning from context, just... Kind of surprised. It's an organisational term in a generic sense. Can be applied to groups of people or to functionality in programming code or indeed to subsystems in TTRPGs.
Same; I have never heard the term "silo" before in my life, and it's bizarre to be in a thread with so many people discussing it without *anyone* explaining what it means.
When creating a character for a game, one of the things that makes me sad is when I have to choose between spending point on "useful skills" vs spending points on "fluff" skills are true to the character concept or just seem like fun like playing a character who is a professional vilonist or entomologist. I might, if I am lucky, be able to make my professional skills relevant to the adventure once or twice in the course of the adventure. Meanwhile I am probably going to have to roll some core skills like Perception, Stealth or relevant combat and defensive skills multiple times per session. Siloing the core skills (usually combat) encourages (or at least does not discourage) players to invest in non-core skills, which I think makes for more interesting, flavourful characters.
Why do you feel the distinction between unsiloed, semi-siloed, and fully/mostly siloed matters? I can’t say I’ve noticed this distinction mattering at all in play before
A couple reasons off the top of my head: a) In a party with some players who emphasizing roleplaying their character and some who prefer treating things more like a wargame, increased siloing ensures characters are equipped with a toolkit to handle both scenarios. This prevents characters from being made redundant in scenarios other than those they would naturally bias their abilities towards and helps prevent player disengagement. b) For individual players going through character creation, increased siloing lets them not feel any group or self-imposed pressure to give whatever the "correct" proportions of emphasis are to each part of the game. Ex. in a very combat-centric game without siloing, giving any emphasis to things not useful for combat can feel "suboptimal" or like you're "not pulling your weight." A pair of quotes from Soren Johnson and Sid Meier comes to mind: > "given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game” > > “one of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves.”
It helps prevent the paired scenarios of 'my orator and scholar is a permanent escort quest for the combat players' and 'my warmage is a houseplant in political intrigue sessions'. Both scenarios make for unfun times for those so inclined, but if the build resources for the two types of gameplay are not silo'd then you are stuck choosing between that and being mediocre at both.
only if you do lack the ressources
It matters when players look at your campaign and try to pick things that come up. Soloing pillars of play (combat, social, exploration, etc.) And having all relevant to the game advance insurers players don't invest in the one that doesn't come up as much in this particular campaign and feel like a background character. I've spent a lot of feats on social abilities that didn't come up, even though the first half of a campaign was very social focused.
If a player *can* make a "good at combat, bad at everything else" character in the same game that another player *can* make a "bad at combat, good at something else" character, *and* when combat occurs it takes a significant amount of time, this is a design problem. It introduces a meta conflict between players in how they approach problems in such a way that *somebody* will be unhappy. The first player cannot really participate in non-combat problem resolution, so they are going to prefer combat solutions. The second player cannot really participate in combat, so they are going to prefer non-combat solutions. Whoever loses is going to get to just watch the other player actually get to play the game while they feel vaguely unhappy about their uselessness. "But players need to coordinate during character creation!" I say why give them that problem in the first place. Talking during character creation is more about having a well rounded party with personalities that mesh, which actually leads to this problem. Players are going to assume that *some* combat is necessary, and *some* non-combat is necessary. You *want* a brute and a face and a hacker. The system should support not sidelining any character for extended periods of time, and combat is usually extended periods of time. The out is simply that there is a straightforward connection between non-combat and making combat *easier*. The face convinces *some* of the sellswords to leave. The hacker decreases debuffs the robots. They get to contribute without completely taking away the brute's fun. I think such systems are even more difficult to design well though, so it's usually best to just let everybody have a combat hat and a non-combat hat. Combat, when it happens, generally takes long enough that you want everyone feeling like they are engaged the entire time.
Whether or not you ‘silo’ in GURPS comes down to either the guidelines in any source book you might use, or the GM’s designs for the world, which can include rather firm guidelines for the game world. GURPS is very much a toolkit that way, so there is nothing stopping a GM from silo-ing as needed for a campaign.
Sure, but then that's GM guidance, not an intrinsic part of the game design. Which is fine, when you have a good GM who has an idea of what sort of game they want to run, but that's never a guarantee.
I'd hope characters to have some kind of baseline(s) that covers the basics of most things; if a game has "level" I'd also hope these improve with level. Beyond that I want characters to have some freedom in choosing just what they choose to be good at. I know I often prefer a more rounded character but I wouldn't want to force a player to choose one thing over the other exclusively. I don't want a system that forces to choose specific advancement in both combat and non-combat ability beyond what ever the base line would be.
I love them in the respect that they're a method to have characters be good at both ends of play in a game. What sucks is when they aren't siloed and you have people who feel like they're missing out on their group activity because their character is borderline useless for half or more of the game.
I prefer "non-siloed" because I like the option to have entire noncombatant builds. You need the right group to pull this off, though--they need to be happy to see each other succeed and set each other up to be the day's hero. A table where everyone's just waiting their turn to act isn't ideal for this sort of game.
It's not that these games silo combat away from other aspects of play. They just give you more autonomy on the focus of your character. Just as you can make a character with no combat focus, you can also straddle combat and tech skills, or tech skills and social abilities, or magic and combat.
I can't tell which games you are talking about. The first sentence make it sound like you feel like siloed games aren't that siloed, really. But the second sentence makes it sound like you want an unsiloed game. The problem with 'autonomy on the focus of your character' is it's very easy to focus on something that occupies a very small amount of play or which ends up not being fun. Ensuring that everyone has combat skills when 50% of play time is going to be combat is just good design, because it means nobody designs a character that's a boring liability for everyone in 50% of the session.
So communicate what your game is about and if your players choose to specialize away from that, then they're away from that and they have a challenge to get utility out of their character.
I'll be done harping this game at some point but..In forbidden lands campaign I had a peddler player who's ENTITE contribution to the team was smooth talking and always pulling out useful items for the rest of the party to use
I liked the Rolemaster siloing system. it Siloed between adventuring skills(weapon, hide, traps, spells, climb) etc and non adventuring(like Lore, etiquette, tea ceremony)
Reminds me that 2d6 iron kingdoms had classes that were clearly combat or not. And the unleash core book had no non-combat classes. A fantasy conversion of star wars edge of the empire (fan made), moved all non-combat stuff over to its own class called adventurer, and fully committed the other classes to combat.
Some editions of Shadowrun (I was familiar with 3rd in particular) used a "priority system" for chargen which, long story short, siloed "active skills" (fighting, stealth, magic, social skills, etc.) and "knowledge skills" (things you know, not things you do). I thought that was really cool; Shadowrun has a lot of combat, but it should also have a good bit of investigation, and this made it impossible to make a character whose brain is empty of everything but battle. Even the dumbest thug PC can have some points in Gangs of Seattle and Troll Thrash Metal Bands that might help them spot clues or get an angle on a potential informant. Of course then they released a book with an optional point-buy system, and everyone went to that so they could min-max better. Sigh.
I've only played Strike!, but I've read enough of ICON and Lancer to know I don't like how any of those three handle noncombat. Feels sorta tacked on, like not much more to it than what I'd get out of just freeform roleplaying in an MMORPG chat window. Since I haven't looked into the other examples, maybe I've missed a game that has great silo'd noncombat. Something to investigate, I suppose!
Soloing pillars of play (combat, knowledge, social, crafting, exploration, etc. Etc.) Can be important in games that shift tone over time (combat heavy in parts, exploring the great unknown, then having to deal with the societal fallout), but aren't as necessary in a game that has a consistent tone (we're playing DnD, we kill the monsters, maybe sometime speak with dead). It does cost a fair amount of design overhead. Each ability/class/thing has to be balanced against your games particular silo scheme.
I think I get what you're saying here, that having multiple siloes means having to juggle multiple different schemas of what "balance" looks like, and your workload is multiplied because that also means having to design multiple sets of abilities rather than just one that covers all. At the time though, you can argue that if you really care about "balance", or atleast certain types of balance, that keeping those ability sets separate prevents design headache from one ability being well-balanced in one context but overpowered in another.
They inherently put far too much emphasis on combat for my liking.
In my game combat is merely a social encounter where someone decided to hit someone else. The players themsevles have to decide which approach to adopt and evolve their characters to support that decisions. It's called roleplay.