I think there should be no justification required for Attribute raises up to the racial maximums.  I also believe that no justfication should be required for skills - up to a point.  I still standy by my previous post to the list in regards to having an amount of time have to elapse between skill raises, as it only makes sense that a character would not be able to become an expert in a skill all in one day.  If s/he wants that quick of advancement, there are skillsofts and knowsofts available.

That being said, what sort of no-justification limit for Skills is appropriate?  If I were asked, I would say 6.  Previously, chargen generally required justification of skills above 4 to be explained somewhere in your background.  Once live, I do not feel that explanations for skills above 6 would be that much of a hinderance on the staff, as the number of times in a month that a given character would want to raise a skill above 6 is going to be maybe once or twice.  This keeps the queues low, allows players to alter their characters without oversight pretty much in any way that they see fit, but still maintains some semblence of rationality.

I would like to say that if we do go the no-justification route or anything like it, then please be mature enough to take skills at levels that make sense. The explanation lists for skills and attributes: Know them. Love them. They took a long time to write, and we would be sad if you ignored them. 

I don't think there is anything wrong with justifications as they've been used on Seattle in the past, and would be in favor of similar on the new MUSH. I don't see them as much of a hinderance to write a short paragraph either explaining why you deserve it or referencing something you did that would have allowed you to improve.

For example, on the current seattle, I was raising Electronics and Electronics B/R to 6 and 5 respectively. It took all of ten minutes to write a brief 'Over the last six months I have done near constant electronics and b/r work, with target numbers of near 14 at times with mostly success. You can see that in gmnotes #<whatever>.' Clearly I had some justification, so it wasn't difficult at all to receive the raise, nor was it difficult to document.

On more nebulous items, justification can certainly be a bit tricky, but why is it such a big deal? All they are looking for is a good reason for you to be improving. iRL, I'm certainly not getting stronger sitting here on my ass typing this -- I'd have to go to the gym and work out, and I really can't expect to be 'superhuman' with such modest effort. Direct comparisons of game to real life are always suspect, but I think that it's important to keep in mind what those numbers mean. 3 is Professional ... it's the norm. Raises above that should require progressively increasing justification. It may only require a few words or a PCNote to justify a raise to 4, but having an 'elite' strength is on par with contestants (maybe not winners) of the world's strongest man. So what is wrong with taking the time to justify your character being on that level?

I can understand the alternate viewpoint, and I'm not against it, but I don't see having this additional check as useless or a "waste of time". Even if you dislike a justification-based system, you can turn it to your advantage by using it for ideas in your RP, making mention of the fact that you are going to the gym five times a week and that they 'roid using trolls are scaring you in the locker room. I mean just the fact that you mentioned it is already going a long way towards the required justification. Log it or PCNote the exchange, and everyone will be happy.

That said, I don't care. I've never had a problem either way, but I just wanted to put out the opposing viewpoint.

Like everything else on Seattle the information is all over the place.

'hr skill raises :

'hr attribute raises' :

There is also admin queueing for approval to raise anything to a 5 or higher, I believe. I'm not sure where that's written, but the karma spending system is automated and that's how it seems to work. Regardless of if it requires queueing, you have to write a blurb which goes into your permanent record ... I'm ashamed of how little thought I actually put into some of those justifications.

I didn't like it originally, but overall it worked out pretty well in my opinion. Karma on the old MUSH is certainly a different beast then as proposed on the new one, but I think some modification of the above will work equally well.

Oh, sorry. Keep in mind that these are, of course, based on SR3 rules, but you can make a rough comparison by compressing them. Besides, what's in the book is what we try to go by, so check those out first. These are just elaborations. (Written mostly by me, so naturally I'm biased.)

1: A Barely Functional Skill
        A 1 in a skill signifies a very, VERY rudimentary understanding of a skill. Reading through the manual for your telecom a couple times could qualify for a 1 in Electronics. Taking a First Aid/CPR course at the fire station (and paying attention!) is reasonable justification for a Biotech skill of 1. To put it another way, it doesn't take much work at all to get a 1, but the rewards aren't anything to write home about either: you probably won't make things worse while using the skill, but that's about it. Statistically, if you have a 3 in the linked attribute, a 1 in the skill is just marginally better in terms of average successes.

2: A Mediocre Skill
        A 2 in a skill signifies the beginning stages of competence. As an example, people who've taken a community college course or two generally have 2's in those skills. Jimmy Paperhat working at McHughs probably has a 2 in Fast Food Preparation. Get a subscription to Vogue and you'll have Fashion at 2 in a couple months.

3: An Average Skill
        A 3 in a skill signifies that a character can routinely perform at a competent level. A character with a 3 has some degree of training and/or experience using a skill. The average person has 3's in skills related to their career after working in the same field for a while. An IT person who can set up a firewall, routers, and a network server, a cop who can chase down a shoplifter fleeing arrest, a medical professional who can sew up an inch-long gash on your head in short order, and a librarian who can give you the Dewey Decimal reference number for say, Zoology off the top of his or her head all have 3s.

4: A Well-Developed Skill
        A 4 in a skill signifies a skill that a character has quite probably some inborn talent at using and several years of experience with OR a great deal of training and some experience in. A 4 in a skill means that while you may not be uberleet, you rarely fail at mundane tasks and do not have to think too much while using the skill unless something unusual comes up. Someone who paid attention in college probably has a 4 in at least one knowledge skill. An associate's degree and a year or three of work experience could also put one at skill level of 4.

5: A Very Good Skill
        A 5 in a skill signifies that the character knows the ins and outs of a skill quite well, usually from spending a good portion of their life using it professionally. These people know more than they don't know about what they do. The average wageslave might reach a 5 in a skill shortly before retiring, earlier if they're very talented, but most people with 5s are people with masters degrees, heads of local or regional corporate departments, and other such professionals.

6: An Authoritative Skill
        A 6 in a skill signifies that this person has dedicated their lives to mastery of a given subject. People with doctorate degrees and Olympic atheletes are the most common examples of people with 6's.

7: An Amazing Skill
        A 7 in a skill signifies one that is performed with a truly expert degree of proficiency. Someone with a 7 in a skill is not only gifted, but has also probably been at it for a decade or more. Someone with a skill at 7 may not achieve world-renown, but is respected at least regionally as one of, if not THE person to go to in their area of expertise.

8+: A World-Class Skill
        An 8 in a skill signifies that the person is an expert known world-wide in the field. Stephen Hawking has an 8 in Physics. Einstein probably had a 9. SR: Seattle MUSH has a 10 in Being Awesome.

Please read the skills section carefully. ?No skill can rise above a 6 unless you take the exceptional ability quality. ?Then, the cap is 7. ?According to SR4, 3 is considered expert, a fully trained and competent individual. ?6 is elite. ?7 is legendary.


Nothing is wrong with the idea of justifying your abilities IC. ?However, justifications will either a) fall short of that or b) be a barrier to character advancement that we just don't need with the new proposed karma system. ?For a, I mean requesting a paragraph unsupported by logs, gmnotes, or anything of the sort. ?You just say "I wurked out!!1" And the admin raises your strength. ?Pointless, useless, waste of time. ?Not very MUCH time, but it doesn't need to be done. ?Especially cuz I've had admins on a bad day say "Hmm, working out to raise body to 4? ?I don't know about that. ?Did you do anything worth that raise in a plot?" ?Since short justifications are so short and so easy as to be mostly irrelevant, but still let staff discretion pimp slap you at random, I think we shouldn't use that kind of system. ?

As for b), it appears to work well in terms of realism, at least on the surface. ?Obviously there wouldn't be a log requirement for things like opening a skill at 1, or raising up to let's say 3. ?However, beyond that, you would need to provide real, factual information about why you deserve to be allowed to raise your skill, with the standards getting higher with each point from 4 to 6 (or 7 once in a while). ?A system that requires actual logs, proof of RP in plots or otherwise that you're worthy of raising a skill, is the only way to ensure that the justifications matter, and that they're not just wholly falisifed. This raises some immediate and serious concerns, like how many increase justifications are best done off-camera. If I write a computer program for 8 months to justify raising software, there is just not gonna be any associated log for that, and thus under a log requirement system off camera skills either can't be raised or are held to a lower standard than things typically done on camera. ?But if I can program a computer for a long time to justify becoming an elite programmer, there's no reason I can't just shoot a gun for a long time at a target to justify becoming an elite marksman... ?And, while there may be strict "set" requirements for exactly what the log must entail, and it will still require a qualitiative staff decision. ?Which means that at some point, one person will earn a skillraise while a person with a similar case and a different staffer will not, which is unfair.

The entire reason behind justifications and time on SR3 muxes is because people had too much karma and there was no limit on skills. ?You could get 60 karma in 2 months of bar rp, and get a 12 in a skill, and be unstoppable. ?That no longer exists. ?The conditions that made skill justifications necessary for game balance are going, going, gone. ?You simply can't break the system by having too much karma; you show me a character with 6's in literally everything, I'll build you a character out of chargen who could kill him no-contest. ?Just like IRL, the newbies can get lucky and kill the veterans; in SR3, that was numerically impossible. ?Thus, as the need for limiting advancement is gone, so is the need for skill and attribute raise justifications.

Please read the previous posts carefully.  The listed explanation of skills was the requested explanation of SR:S SR3 skills.

The irony. I lost out on a good pithy comment because I'm long-winded and verbose. How sad.


I would say that is not a case of the system failing the person, but rather the person failing the system. If the best you can do is the above, you may want to reevaluate your raise and possibly your playing style. In a text-based medium everything is reliant purely on your ability to write and be descriptive. "You" in the previous statements are as objective pronouns, not directed personally.

It's also important to note that advancement to lower levels is automatic under the current system, requiring no admin intervention (just a few commands and a short written explanation that goes onto your character record), so the 'admin just raising the skill' on the basis of your explanation is not really a concern.


Your justification is only as short as you make it. At that point, the question is 'how much do you want to ensure success?' If you're willing to chance an admin-approved raise with a weak attempt at justification, ?either you didn't really want that raise very much or you didn't deserve it. Either way, you shouldn't be surprised at the outcome. The counter argument to all that is now you are spending more time on the justification, etc, and you consider that a waste of time. I'd consider it an investment of time to receive a desired outcome, personally, but that is a matter of perspective. When you are doing any significant, admin-approved raises, you should either have a sufficiently detailed explanation of why, or have appropriate evidence available with a short explanation. I've had both techniques work successfully, as have many others.

I don't feel it's productive to start any new MUSH with a discussion of staff pimp-slapping. The idea is that we are letting all that go, and being positive. I hope that noone is so personally involved at this point so as to be that concerned about those type of attacks, and believe that as long as people are willing to be positive and work as a community, that will not be an issue.


I don't think anyone is going to require a log of you lifting weights or shooting at a target for 200 lines as 'evidence' of your improvement. Frankly, I suspect you'd get away with a PCNote detailing that you INTEND to raise <x> sometime in the future and are doing <y>, <z> and ... <a> (ran out of letters ... damn alphabet). In fact, that's worked for me in the past. Certainly these things are primarily 'offline', but putting a blurb in a PCnote or in a log that you are doing x,y,z aren't that difficult, and make the 'justification' part go much easier, since it no longer looks like this is a spur of the moment 'I want to be uber-leetz.' Just the fact that four weeks ago you thought about it and made a timestamped note will probably work.


I largely agree with your statement here, and while at the beginning of my comments on this conversation, I didn't care either way, I've started to think justifications are a very good idea. We may not need to slow anyone down, but justifications serve as a method to remind people that character statistics are something other then numbers on paper, and I think all too many people forget that.

I add nothing to this conversation, please skip over this post...

I don't need to forget that skills are just numbers on paper, because they are only that.  In fact, skill raises don't make for a hill of beans of anything else, unless the player is taking them to be a guideline to their everyday RP.  That's true for everything in a game like ours, we have our character made up of stats, skills, abilities, gear, more vague resources, of course our background and RP.

When someone is required to justify their skill increase it does a few things. 

1)  It is an initial statement of distrust.  In my GMing experience I don't care how much, what or why the players are raising what they are... I just let them raise.  Why?  Because I trust my players not to do anything that is outside of their character.  That's a pretty easy amount of trust really.  They've put in the Roleplay, I thought them worth it enough to give them the karma in the first place, whatever it was that earned them that karma is enough for them to deserve whatever sort of increase they want.  Afterall, isn't that what the issuing of karma is all about?  You did something fun/good/creative enough to garner yourself some untapped character growth.  Beyond the first step of deeming you worthy enough to receive it, as a GM, I'm not going to be concerned how you spend it.  My job thinks my work worthwhile enough to pay me, but they have no say nor attempt any say in how I spend it.  I earned it, its mine, I did stuff ALREADY to have earned the right to spend it however I might damn well please.

2)  Justification for skills and stats are usually presented as something simple, easy, a thing that won't take a lot of time.  As soon as you venture into justifications however, you are jumping through another hoop.  One that is unnecessary in the current system.  If I write down what I did in order to raise Pistols from 4 to 5, and the GM doesn't think it worthwhile enough (despite my pcnotes, gmnotes, and logs) than I don't get it.  Another GM might approve the very same thing sometime later because, like me, they find the evidence compelling, but instead I got stuck with the other staffer.  So now I start making justifications that have nothing to do AT ALL with my character, in order to get the skill raise that fits the RP I've been doing and for future growth that I'd like to have in a particular fashion for my particular character.  I might see that my playing virtual games so much is cause to increase my music theory scores because of some subtle RP going on with my character about walking in step with stuff, seeing rhythms, hearing overtones and whatnot from cyber/tech implants.  And the GM on the other side of the screens thinks that it is just too far fetched, so doesn't like it, despite all my logs of how I'm adding so much to my RP to make it that more interesting.  So, moving to justifications  can cause hoops to allow a player the ability to be as creative as they like, in the way they like, that benefits more than just them.  I'm not saying it always does, just saying it can.  And seeing as such insignificant, non-time consuming events, that have been proposed for justification aren't likely to cause any sort of epiphanies in RP the danger of losing creativity seems more likely.

3)  It just feels better to get to a certain point, having the right amount of karma and just type in a command and advance my character.  I don't have to wait on a queue that might take a LONG time to get back to me.  I don't have to sit around and think of some lame-brained reason why my skill is increasing beyond that being just the 'feeling' I'm getting for my character.  I don't have to try and explain myself, when I've already proven myself a talented enough writer, a good enough roleplayer, and a sensible enough player to do good poses at appropriate times which have allowed me to last long enough to buy my new skill.  If justifications are required than after I've done ALL that already, whch is all fun, I get a sour taste in my mouth because now I've got to beg for my skill.  I've already been deemed worthy, I wanted to feel good about choosing where my character goes because I think its the best and most likely outcome of their RP, and now I've gotta some how explain that vague good feeling to someone through a textual medium, wracking my brain to formulate words that will likely be just glanced at and tossed aside with an approved stamp on them.  That doesn't leave me feeling good.

You wanna go through the hassle of looking at all those queues instead of having a clean, easy to use command?  You want to break down my enjoyment of the game for those minutes to hours, to sometimes days, while I write my queue and wait for its return to see if I've managed to be lucky enough to not get a staffer in a bad mood?  You want to be the one who explains to me that after spending 6 months to earn 20 karma I've NOW got to write 2 ridiculous sentences explaining even MORE on how over 6 months I brought my pistols skill 1 point from 3 to 4?  Cause YOU think it'd be GOOD for my Roleplay?!  Even though I'VE already been given a big thumbs up since I already earned the +awards?  No thanks.  I'll go with trusting players, not risking stifling any creativity, and assuredly not being the one to assume someone else doesn't know what the most appropriate way to grow their own character is; especially in a system where there's no worry about power struggles as all the archetypes are pretty well-balanced.

I must say I pretty much whole heartedly agree with NES on this one. Afterall is it my character or is it yours? The moment I start having to justify what I do with the character to you cause of something fairly simple as a skill raise I begin to get the feeling that suddenly my character has been stolen from me cause some one else. Who may never have RPed with me. Decides that no. I shouldnt have that new skill or skill raise dispite the fact that I quite obviously have saved up the Karma to buy it.

My best example since I liked my sniper adept and essetnially itent to make a new one for the new seattle. Is to buy the aptitude (long arms) perk. So when time comes finally (assuming I live long enough) that I decide it's time to raise my long arms from 6 to 7. I dont see why anyone should tell me no you cant do that!. Why the hell not? I paid for the aptitude way back in CG. I've done obsence ammounts of sniping with the char and likely take more than a few totally out there shots (Afterall I sure as hell took some 'yeah right' shots with Jurgen. And even pulled a few off with some rather nice results for us on the run).

Afterall I've paid for it. Through the RP, Through the various things I've done. Through the waiting and saving up that karma to finally spend it on THAT skill rather than taking it and dumping it into several others. (And the way I work while i'm saving up I'll likely 'touch up' a few skills along the way. Granted not everyone is like that but so what?). It's my character and damit I want him to be the best sniper out there. Or at least one of the best. (Since afterall dice wise the very best would be a keeb which i'm not playing but that isnt the point).

Granted I could buy that right out of CG even. But then that doesnt make for a terribly flexible character as for the BP cost that goes into that I can easily afford a few other equally very necessary skills. (afterall thats' 32 BP 42 with the necesary aptitude and 44 if i further add on specialization sniper rifles. Which is more than enough BP to buy up an entire skill group to the cap of 4 and still have 4 BP left over for something else)

That's really my primary point, and I'm restating it cuz I think my post was too long to really get it emphasized.  Jusifications are either going to be to easy, or too hard.  They're either going to require a short paragraph of utter crap that doesn't even have to be true, or they're going to require some retardedly extensive record of on-camera action that, when presented, still gives no guarantee of an approved raise.


That's exactly why justification is bad on a MUX.  What one staffer considers appropriate for justifications doesn't meet the standards of another.  That's just setting the scene for unfairness.


I think what you're suggesting here is that there is some defined way to guarantee that you'll get a raise.  Just make your justification good enough, you say.  And if it's not, then it's your fault, with no heed paid to the fact that what's good enough for Dreamer might not be good enough for Waffle.  That I might get a raise for the same amount of work as you, while yours is summarily denied.  Does that seem like the potential outcome of a useful, healthy skillraise system?

All in all, karma bloat has been dammed up and skills are capped at 6; Every dice pool has a hard cap, and raising your skill to meet the cap, as far as I've seen from play, is incapable of breaking the system.  If high dice pools don't pose a systemic problem, why should we give a damn about them?  Requiring a justification in the absence of a mechanical necessity is just a statement of distrust.  From Austin, I'm hearing that he doesn't trust other players to RP their skillraises appropriately, and he does trust the staffers to all have the same means of evaluating qmails.  On my part, I think that since we come together to RP, it's our goal and our passion, we should be trusted fully to play our characters well.  And I know for a fact that the same things do not happen in Melkir's brain as... well, anyone else's, for instance.

hey! I am paying attention you know!

Yes but it IS your brain were talking about Melkir. And it's exceedingly devious at times. Among other things.

The following proposal has the objectives of: 1) Minimal admin intervention needed. 2) Reasonable advancement speed in skills and attributes. 3) Simple coding.

---

I recommend a +command that will let you raise your own skills, attributes, and so forth without admin intervention. ?I'll call it "+spendkarma" for purposes of this post, but obviously the command name is just cosmetic. ?The command syntax would be as simple as "+spendkarma Intuition" or "+spendkarma First Aid."

Since "unsupervised" advancement is historically ripe for abuse (or at least, misuse), I recommend a time delay. ?Specifically, I suggest that a player may +spendkarma on something and then that player will be locked out of using +spendkarma again on that particular attribute/skill for a number of real-world weeks equal to the karma expended. ?At the end of that time, they can +spendkarma on it again.

This, coupled with the slow karma award trickle, will prevent anyone from rocketing up in any particular attribute or skill "too quickly." ?I put "too quickly" in quotes because it's an entirely subjective statement, best determined by the admins. ?If they want even slower advancement, then the delay can be made into (Fudge Factor) x (Karma Spent) weeks instead. ? I wouldn't recommend slowing it down too much more, though, as that can get really really long between advancements.

Numeric example: To raise an active skill from 1 to 2, it takes 4 karma and 4 weeks. ?From 2 to 3, 6 karma and 6 weeks. From 3 to 4, 8 karma and 8 weeks. ?From 4 to 5, 10 karma and 10 weeks. ?From 5 to 6, 12 karma and 12 weeks. ?From 6 to 7 (if Aptitude is present), 28 karma and 28 weeks.

In that example, it would take someone a total of 68 karma and at least 68 real-world weeks to go from "Pistols for Dummies" to "John Woo 2070." ?That's an unrealistic timeframe as far as how the real world works, but for purposes of an enjoyable game it's tolerable. ?You'd basically have to play the character for at least a year and a half to go from 1 to 7. ?Going from 1 to 6 is about 10 months, minimum.

In practice, it will likely take longer than the designated minimum timeframe to advance a character.  Inadequate karma supply will obviously delay advancement.  This will circumstantially encourage people to raise their lower attributes and skills rather than focus on their higher ones, but will not negate the possibility of raising the higher ones altogether.

Note also that this means there will be faster advancement for knowledge skills, slower advancement for attributes, and even slower advancement for skill groups.