After you left today, Jirris, Pyat and I kept talking about your 
plans for character creation in Claw 2.0. Here's a summary:

= IF IT AIN'T BROKE... =

    I don't think getting rid of Character Points is the right move. 
The way you've described your new approach to Gifts, I can't see how 
it streamlines or simplifies character creation. It certainly doesn't 
sound like it's going to simplify the game as a whole. It feels like 
you're pushing to rid of Character Points just for the sake of 
getting rid of Character Points.

    And, from what you've said, you're not really doing that -- 
you're just restricting them to Skill Points, and coming up with a 
Whole Nother Bunch Of Rules for Gift allocation. Which forces you to 
come up with yet a THIRD set of new rules for XP.

    When did you start favoring the "if one rule is good, three will 
be better" school of design?

    Honestly, I don't think you really need to mess with Claw's 
character design. It's GOOD. It's SOLID. It's FAST and SIMPLE. I 
haven't played a system that let me generate characters so quickly 
since D&D got more complicated than "roll 3d6 six times". I like the 
new WoD2 take on Flaws, and I like the idea of "Dubious Gifts" -- but 
otherwise, IT AIN'T BROKE.

    I like Claw's XP. It's one of the best parts of the system. It's 
elegant. It keeps players thinking ahead without being quite as 
constraining as D&D's level-based system, it makes PCs advance in 
logical ways, and it's flexible without being formless. In fact, that 
last goes for the whole of Claw 1.X's character creation.

    A big part of what makes the XP system work so well is that, with 
a single exception, XP directly translate to CP. Five XP, and you 
notch up a CP. You don't have to learn a new rule, and, unlike 
Albedo, you don't have to look things up on a table. Not only does IC 
have fast, efficient character CREATION rules, it's also got the most 
efficient character advancement rules I've seen. We'd spend maybe ten 
minutes after every session allocating our rewards. You don't have to 
choose whether to "save points up" -- if you want something pricey, 
you just buy it incrementally. It was even faster and easier than 
"Leveling Up" in D&D3, where you have to allocate those fiddly Skill 
Points.

    As for keeping Skills and Gifts on a compatible, integrated 
system, Jirris conversed at length about "Gifted" characters vs. 
"Talented" characters: 

    "The extreme of a Gifted character would be a Bat with a high 
Body who buys lots of Gifts, and depends on his Career to handle the 
load of his Skills.  The extreme of a Talented character would be 
say, an Otter Elementalist who buys no gifts and just sinks his 
points into Spells and Skills. 

    "In character creation, most people choose to be either Gifted -- 
loading up on a Race with a few useful Gifts and topping out their 
'ten' -- or Talented -- picking a Race with few or no gifts and 
either buying lots of Skills or multiple Careers.

    "There are definitely people who choose neither, but most of the 
people I have played with have decided to be either Gifted or 
Talented.

    "That's part of what I like about Ironclaw's system -- the 
difference in Race abilities and such really add an interesting facet 
into character creation.

    "You are not forced into being either Gifted (D&D barbarian) or 
Talented (bard); you can pick degrees of such things.  No one has 
taken the extremes of both sides but instead prefer to lean into one 
camp or the other just far enough to get the 'advantage' of being 
Gifted or Talented.  If you lean too far, it effectively removes the 
abilities from the other 'camp'."


    I've seen the same thing, both in play and in potential in the 
rules. In Claw 1.x, Gifted vs. Talented characters are well-balanced. 
They both have different but equally-valid and effective STYLES. 
Remember "Opportunity Costs"?

    From what you've told me about your plans for 2.0, it sounds to 
me like that Gifted Vs. Talented distinction is going away. Albedo 
has lost it completely. Everyone has pretty much the same number of 
Gifts at character creation. 

    Of course, Albedo also largely abandons the physical aspects of 
"Racial Gifts" -- and with it, much of the flavor of an 
anthropomorphic game. Tooth and Claw and Prehensile Tail help make 
the Races of Ironclaw more interesting and distinct than DEGH, and 
gives an interesting and engaging variety to play style. When Hite 
said that 'Albedo... has cat-people for some reason', I think he 
stumbled on a core flaw of the setting. There's nothing about the 
GAME that you couldn't do with humans. In Claw, being a Wolf brings 
all kinds of woofy goodness to your character. Being a Bat brings 
entirely different goodness. In Albedo, Race is largely cosmetic. 
That's faithful to the source material, but you built the rules to 
reflect it -- and that's why it concerns me whenever you start 
talking about pulling ideas from Albedo into Claw.

    In Ironclaw, as in any GOOD furry setting, Being Furry has 
significant personal and social implications. If you replaced the 
races of IC with humans, the game would feel very different -- and 
not as entertaining. And if you replace Claw's highly-distinctive 
Race rules with Albedo's bland ones, if you scrap points and just 
make all races equally talented, you'll have the same result.


	-- Your Obedient Serpent