Morning Star, an argument.

 Sometimes, there are thing, ingrained so deep, its hard to let go. My education into medieval weapons came originally from fantasy roleplay. Then later Historical texts, that were as often wrong. Today in the digital age, where we have access to 'all the information' we also have many holes, gaps and the youth get so strung up on 'things which are, are, and everything else is false'

Arguing about the Morning Star.

The Thing about this one, is, there is evidence for both sides. Is it a flail or is it a mace?

What I was raised on, the Ball with spikes is the star, the Flail head, being a cylinder, starred or spiked or plain, but never the less, at least a single chain link to allow flexible movement was the Flail. The Chain however didn't come into it til later, and due to the arc of the end point, being swung, somehow represented morning.

In reality

Medieval peasants brought the flail from the wheat fields to the battlefield. Its well understood and there are many depictions of its use both as a threshing tool, and then by combat manuals. Its more like a club attached to a polearm, but you can see the connection.

Then there is a blur. many articles use the words, may, might, could have, would have. But there does not appear to be clear precise context. Many references turned out to be forgeries. The blurred lines between someone attaching 'something' to the end of a chain, and calling it one thing or another, in different languages. German *seems* to be referring to the head of a mace with the specific spiked 'sun/star' version, where the French and English did not use this term for the mace variety, but for the less common flail variety. 

It also seems, there may have been some confusion, where the holy water sprinkler, was mistaken as a weapon, described on the battlefield, drawn onto parchment and then without having seen one, monks or scholars drew them into artworks, which were then copied by weapon crafters, due to the demands of their lords to at least have one of everything at hand if need be. 

In Dungeonworld

While I could go back into all my documents and relabel morning stars to starred flails, if there seemed to be enough need for it, It begged a question. Does this world and its linguistic path, have to follow our world? Sure, there might be some mild confusion at the game table, when a player requests a morning star, expecting a starred mace, and instead gets a chain weapon, but nuances of the world build is what makes a world interesting. 

As long as its not too many..  

Morning Stars, being the Ball of spikes, on the end of a blocky chain, are fashioned by clever blacksmiths to 'mourn' in the correct direction, and are reduced in their ability to flick back or follow through too far. The chain is blocky and has limited range. It can't easily hit the wielder, unless they are unproficient. [12]* d10B/+d6P, d6AD, 6AF, HP: 120(s) 80(c) 40(w) - only 12s can cause damage, if they miss, to the wielder

Starred Maces, being the Ball of spikes on the end of a club/mace, are fashioned by blacksmiths and weaponsmiths, due to the structure and design, its often too easy for the head of such to snap off, but far cheaper than the morning star. [10], d8/+d6, d6AD, 5AF, HP: 60(s) 40(w)

Morning Star Flails, being a ball of spikes on a common chain, being the lesser cousins, have no blocky form to the chain and as such, swing back into the weilder or overswing and knock the wielder off balance. [11]* d8B/+d6P, d6AD, 5AF, HP: 80(s/c) 40(w). All fail rolls (10,11,12) cause damage to the wielder

Flail, being a wooden club possibly with spikes, at the end of a longer mace/polearm. The weapon, like all flails, can get around shields, and the physics of the swing, causes extra damage, but unproficient wielders will likely be unbalanced. [10]* 2d6B/+d2P), d4AD, 3AF, HP: 50(h) 40(w) (12s cause unbalance)

[Initiative] *unproficient characters +50%

/+ if the Pierce damage goes above armour, add the B damage again to Pierce.

AD: Armour Damage
AF: Armour Factor of the Weapon
(s) star, (c) chain (w) wooden handle (h) head

Impulse and Dignity

An Interesting Discussion on this concept here:

http://geekxgirls.com/article.php?ID=12617

A lot of pushback by people, as it takes away player agency, along the lines of Alignment, yet it did raise some interesting thoughts..

Is this a stat?

Impulse and Dignity Stats

Alignment in games, sets a set of 'actions' which are requirements, and limitations for players. Most players ignore the stat, they want to do whats right for the moment, regardless of what their "character" would do, and for a lot of gung-ho gonzo new players, this is perfectly fine. Finding your 'role-play feet' takes time, and some people never get them, their characters are always a chaotic mishmash of tropes, funny things to entertain(and annoy) the table rather than a coherent set of actions by a real person in a real world.

The Idea of Alignment may have been one way to 'control' this by GMs and games designers, you can't go killing that peasant, your god won't like it.

A lot of people rile against this form of control, they don't understand that they are ruining the world, the game, the fun of others at the table, as that peasant was crucial to the plot. Games-master don't like to upset players, because a lot of work an effort has gone into creating the campaign, as much for these specific set of players, so the small actions of one player can mostly be worked around.

Impulse, on the other hand, seems instead to be a gung-ho, zany, gonzo GM, trying to get players who are paying their characters more stoicly, to break out of their shell and do zany things.

(Maybe this Zany GM, has had alot of the gonzo players, and thinks this is the norm?)

Dignity, is more or less a way for the players to be able to resist this, provided they stick to their dignity score themselves.. which is what raises the point.

The player, setting a value, that says to the GM, here, this is a self defined value, I will agree to stick to this value in role-play, and the reward for this, is... you can't make me go outside that boundary.

Mind control in games is... tentative. You railroad a player to do something, because a spell says they have to, as often as not its a pass/fail situation. Players don't usually have much control over this, yet in the movies and books, we see a character who goes along with the spell, until such time the spell crosses a line and the character resists.. where is that line..

Here.. this stat, is that line.

The Player can be Dignified, Regal, and very un-impulsive, so if they are 'taken over' by a mind control spell, anything a few points below their Dignity score, the character can make further resistance checks, and possibly even break free of the spell.. giving players more agency in the region of mind control spells, they take careful note of what is being asked of them, and if at any time it seems to go outside the boundaries, they can call it, and make a subsequent roll to escape the spell.

Moreso, with Alignment, if a player has aligned as a good character, they are unlikely to steal if mind controlled, even less likely to attack a friends and would likely break free if commanded to kill. The player is free to play his/her character as they wish, their alignment score moves to match this, but the lower it goes, the more choices the GM has when mind control is in play.

Its already there with Clerics, Gods and their rules.. but with this addition, its now there for all classes.   

Childhood to Adult: Character Creation

Most Recent Update - Character Creation process

For a very long time, I've had one big missing element: Character creation. Now you might think this quite insane. How can you have a roleplay game without character creation... well ok, so I mean that it was not so much missing, as, my definition of character creation is a bit more 'plot' based, and that chapter wasn't properly written... at all...hence missing.

This isn't "CHARACTER" creation, beards and hair colour, even rolling stats isn't character creation..
Character Creation is creating "the Character", where was he born, what kinds of family did he grow up with and what skills did they teach him, How did that affect his choices to become a hero. 

    The Version that existed, and still does (as of this blog) is the template system. This is what most people think of when they think "character creation". Players would roll the dice and consult a chart to see what was a good character to make with the numbers they rolled. Pick a race, add race template, pick a Lifestyle, add Lifestyle template, pick a hero career, add Career template. It is/was fast, quick, efficient, and got you a character.. without any character. I had a few players who complained, wanted a more in depth creation system. claiming they felt their character was just a bunch of number and had no life (like most systems).
    So I developed a more in-depth, more story and plot based character creation, and I added a decent amount of crunch to go with it:

How Far do you want to go back?

Technically, if you want to start with your grandparents, you can. Roll up their stats, find out what they did for a living, and how that affected you. Then roll up your Parent Modifiers, adjust your stat sets and finally arrive at a set of characteristics that represents YOU.

Well, maybe not that far

So, Most players will simply roll up their own stats. I've never really been a fan of the point buy system, so while I have created a balanced system for players to use, I've also spent a bit of time creating a structured system for rolling that gives players the ability to balance things themselves (more on that later). 

My system encourages character creation to take place over 1-4 roleplay sessions. You roll up your stats, take a childhood skill list based on where you were born (and where your group will roleplay) then an apprenticeship, which gives you an approx 12yr old.. then you and your 'group of friends' can go out and discover things (Session #1)

Next, your progress your characters to teenagers, take a Journeyman skill set, based on whats available, and roleplay your 'friend circle' as teenagers.. get in trouble, have a local fight with the rival gang, or get lost discovering some ancient crypt & tunnels, that everyone has gone through before, but maybe 1-2 coins were left behind (a treasure to a teen, worth 10 years of pocketmoney) (session #2)

Lastly, why did you become an Adventurer.. take on the Adventurer path that suits you, grab the skills from it, but it also lists skills that you can choose to take, Now the player gets more choices, where to become more skilled, things that don't match the mundane life you left behind..your gang finds some clue, maybe something you already had in your attic, a map in a painting frame, with a stashed coin with holes in it.. now you take your team of adventurers and go find one eyed willies treasure (session #3-4)

Why this works better than the old man at the fire

The old man begins to tell you a story of a dungeon...
The players, realise its a plot hook and leave the campsite..
The DM cries, as all his work for 3 weeks is useless

When players come together, create characters and start roleplaying, there is a missing element of 'how did we get here' its assumed that this will be filled in afterwards. It often never happens. When it doesn't, and a conflict within the group arises, there is no logical reason for the group to stay together, they 'just do' and deal with the conflict 'offline'.. what I mean by that is they don't deal with it in game, so these characters have some unknown reason why they suddenly hate each other, draw weapons, start to fight, but calm down and are best of friends, without ever resolving the reason why they fought.

By including a whole 1-3 roleplay sessions prior to the main plot, all those 'unknowns' become more obvious. Turns out that all this time stevenson and harold were at odds because stevenson got the extra treasure when they were kids and it just ate into harold, and made him resentful to stevenson. (in real life, their players just don't get along, but now we have more backstory)

Also, maybe its just my groups, but I only ever really had 1 player write detailed backstory for their character, sometimes this backstory would be 3 pages and often included some very dubious connections, in that the player was now noble blooded, friends of three other noble families and received a monthly stipend of a few thousand dollars.. game & plot breaking backstory.. 

So now, all players have a backstory, all players have something to refer to in game & in plot.. Also they have a little more than 5 minutes of 'love' for their character.. in this method, I've yet to have throw-away suicides, so they could get a 'better character', though I have had plot reasons for players to 'need' to wade into a suicide missions, which again, made more sense because we had backstory.

This is not for everyone.. or is it?

If your group is only playing 1-4 sessions for an adventure, then having a break and playing a different system, then obviously this isn't for you. But if your going to play for anything longer than two months, I'd suggest this as a viable option, and remember, you can always do this in stages.. flashbacks are a wonderful 'break' from the regular..

The Flashback

I've attempted this quite a few times, and with one exception (I'll get into next) its a great way for players to develop a better background.

The biggest factor is the introduction of your characters in a more unique way that average. You start the game, lets say at 5th level, progress for several adventures and you're around 7th and about to take down the end boss.. all seems hopeless, then the GM points out that you've all forgotten something...

The GM passes the characters blank charactersheets and has them copy the basic stats over, and they're all level one or two, the characters are mid adventure, they're entering a simple tomb, and begin play...

The adventure is a fairly straight forward one, nothing too extreme and guarenteed the players are going to win, but just 'how' they win is important.. push to make some lasting effects on characters, wounds that can become scars, rare, exotic burns or items mundane but interesting, powerful artifacts that do nothing.. once they have acquired the end goal, return them from the 'flashback' to the main story.. that artifact, the one they acquired all those years ago? its the object required to take down the end boss.. they've been carrying it all these years and didn't realise it.. 

Mechanically.. the Flashback is the same as RPing the backstory, just later in the game.. Some GMs might award the XP gained from that adventure to the group, based on their choices and results, some might chalk it up to 'backstory', but the point is, you've added more 'character'.

Dungeon Delvers Changes

Since Dungeon Delvers emulates Dungeonworlds System but as a quick "we made most of the choices for you" kind of way, We needed to made backgrounds and races a kind of "sub-profession" system, This has some interesting nuances that many game systems should probably consider.. I'll blog about these in more detail, but in essence.. you can level up your race and background, to represent your backstory & flashbacks, without breaking the flow of the game. 

Point Buy vs Dice Rolls

What do you prefer?

I've never been a fan of point buying. having to choose something high, something low, I always end up min-maxing for the missing link in the group. No Cleric? I'll min-max my CHA & WIS high, Need a Fighter? Super STR & CON man to the rescue!

I far prefer to let the dice speak to me, if I roll up decent stats for a Warrior, I'll be a warrior. If my stats suck for a Warrior, even if the group Needs a warrior, I'll still choose something that matches my stats, and we'll have to figure out how to play, sans warrior.

Does anyone else feel like re-rolling, is like aborting that life? that person you were going to become, is thrust back into the void? never to see the light of day?

My System:

The Problem with most systems is, the limited stat block. when you only have 5 or 6 stats, the chances of
rolling the right stats at the right time can be small. Mathmatically, you'd be less likely to roll at least 1 value above 14,  let alone 2. So you want to provide the player with some fall back, some way to ensure you'll get whats needed to play something good

Since each of my eight lifestyles only really needs 2 values to be above average, and I have 16 Characteristics altogether, the chances of rolling above average almost negates the chance of getting a dud character.

Then we added the fail-safe.. The Spare Roll. 

At first the spare was just that. Spare. You used it to swap with your lower scores, to make sure that you had some chance of getting the career you wanted. But what happens if your spare was lower that the rest? Its usually going to be a low score.. so now it looked like a nice little point bonus for skills or for background points.

Swap Two, Minus One.

Even after swapping the spare, many players came to the game from other systems which allowed them to swap any and all stats.. blocking players from doing something results in unhappy players.. but providing any and all requests.. at a price.. results in players asking themselves.. is it worth it?

So, you choose, Do I keep the stats I have, or do I pay 1 point from one of the swaps, AND 1 point from the spare to make that swap.. is a 16 Strength swapped with 10 intelligence worth the 15 intelligence, 10 strength and minus one from Spare.. or 16 INT, 9 STR instead?

Why do spare points matter? because the nice little bonus for skills & backgrounds is what makes character creation more fun.. 

Now the spare becomes something you don't just throw away. Some players actually swap a good stat from the Char list, that doesn't match their lifestyle, to the spare slot to ensure more swaps, and more background points because more background points means more background choices, which could mean a starting level 2 skill vs just a few level 1 skills.

Rules Description:

In Character Creation, Each of the 5 Aspects of your characters background, (Race, Childhood, Apprenticeship, Journeyman and AdventurePath) cost Background Points, these are respectively averaged at 0, 4, 8, 12 and 16. Through the process, you usually earn 20-30 background points, so its typical to need 10 background points from the spare roll to make good choices.

When you retired a character (or they die) you (the player) earn Karma Points, which often get spent to buy background points for your next character. Since rare races can cost up to 50 background points, and each of the other 4 aspects can cost 10x the average for the rarer choices, the most extreme character might cost as much as 500 Background points!

GMs can easily create any of these aspects to match their own world, or raise and lower the 'costs' associated to match their world.. High fantasy might halve the magi background point costs, while low fantasy might double it. If Elves are impossibly rare, a GM might allow you to choose an elf, but at 10x the racial cost, while an all elf campaign, might negate the race cost completely. 

The Lists

In the endeavours of my system, my best friend Craig, had joined me in the idea of creating this awesome system. He introduced me to rolemaster, Wow, I thought my game was complex... I am curious how modern gamer kids view it, or if they even come across it..

But what we did back then was to grab all the systems we had access to and write out this big lists..

All the Skills, All the Spells, All The Traits, Flaws, Statistics, Modifier charts, Everything.. including all double-ups.. until we had this big BIG set of lists..

Early on, we check for things that were similar duplicates, but also, different duplicates.. wrote notes about how or why they were different.

Skills were broken into three groups.. easy medium and hard.

Spells were left in a big pile for much later.

While things changed, we always came back to these lists to check if we missed something.. sometimes it was a tweak of an idea, where we had the concept wrong from the start.. other times it needed to be scratched out.. too many skills based on the same thing, just because English language has two words for it, doesn't make it separate skills (but often it does)

Original Stats: Ranger

After Reading the Players Hand book on Rangers, AD&D, I thought that making a Hunter Profession was too specific.. By about now, I'd figured that while I liked the concept of Professions, like Warhammer, I also liked to group classes, like D&D.

Warrior was Obvious, Rogues too, One was the straight up fighter, in your face, strength, brawn, maybe leadership for the common good.. and Rogues were more about Self, sneaky, back handed, back stabbing, maybe stealing or conning, or just not giving two shits about another person..

D&D Rangers are/were warriors.. but there were so many aspects, hunters, travellers, herbalists, that didn't fit this concept.. so we though about the loner..

Warriors are about leading groups, and direct confrontation, and rogues, no confrontation, but maybe rangers were in between distanced.. ranged confrontation.. so anything archery based, scouting at a distance,. travelling distances.. became the rangers style.. Rogues were about people, rangers about places.. so Three (of my eventual eight) classes were forming.. but they were more than classes.. they were underlying themes.. lifestyles if you will.

Soon Enough we identified that while a Warrior was about power in combat, Mages were about Power in Magic.. or just power without punching.. maybe they should be rangers counter part, now that I think about it, Clerics and Priests are about people, but either by using them (for their god) or benefitting them (for the people).. is more the Rogues Priest vs the Warrior Priest.. Hmm, seems we're onto something here.. The Idea of Psionic was definately in my notes.. but it seemed that D&D had sewn up that in legal rights at the time, so I wanted to be clear of such things.. and we had Thaumaturge listed from the extended professions list that we created..

Oh the lists.. you should have seen them,,..

So, After some time we had 6 nice clean Classes, Warrior, Ranger, Rogue, Mage, Priest and Thaumaturge. something wasn't quite right.. and still today has been under the ringer... 

The Original Stats: Warrior

For the Longest Time, The DW stats were just the same as Dragon Warrior Stats, with the addition of Ranged Attack...

But we had some problems..

Dragon Warriors Stats are: Attack, defence, Evasion, Stealth, Perception, Magical Attack, Magical Defence.

But how do you compare a Monks attack skill to a knights defence? Monks use Hand fighting.. so.. a knight has a defence modifier? or Monk has attack modifier?

Again I was kitting this wall of 'modifiers' Sure sure, it makes your charactersheet look cleaner to have one stat, then your GM has a table of modifiers to play with.. but either I was too lazy or my players wanted to have more information, we decided that this wasn't good enough..

So we had to have Melee Attack, Melee Defence, Weapon Attack and Weapon Defence.. which was sorta cool..

Then there were some great skills in Warhammer.. Strike Mighty blow, Strike to Stun, Strike to Injure. Some of the other game system had more skills of combat.. always there was a modifier.. -7, -5, -6.. when looking at what they did.. it seemed that they were just the same values, just different to what they actually did.. so why have 3 skills.. 5 skills.. 100 skills.. so we spoke to some Combat Simulations Experts, and for the most part what we got was, a strike, no matter what type.. was a kind of moment when you felt that your opponent had left themselves open, and you took advantage of that to get in a decent blow.. be it harder, faster, or to incapacitate.

So, this Damaging strike.. it was really a kind of regular skill, which in many systems were just Statistics..

Thats really what a Stat is.. its a skill thats used so regularly, by so many classes that you need its value on the front page. So thats where we put it..

Of course, the names needed a change.. Melee, Weapon Skill, Damage Strike, Block, Parry .. but sometimes you just need to get out of the way.. so.. Dodge.

Warrior Stats Down.. what next  Archer..

[DWDev]Statistics Part 2

In Part 1, I discussed how I got to this place.. now what I did about it.

Skills, and how it affected the decisions on stats:

'96 was the Year I really ripped apart the system I had and started again. My Mate Craig and I grabbed a whole slew of skills from all the systems, correlated them into one big list of skills. Crossed out all the double ups, so many systems have skills that are just pointless. Light Lantern! in comparison to Climb. Its all about balance, if a skill is worth a 'slot' of your game, and players can spend X time learning a skill and one give you access to the +Dex/Ref bonus to all climb skills/checks and the other allows you to light a lantern..

The Skill system has pretty much had the same core mechanic from the beginning, but changes the dice used. The Idea was instead of a flat "pass/fail" I'd just recenly seen Vampires 'number of success' system, which made far more sense.. Alot of D&D stories involve some incredibly exotic and mind bending events,.. but give than you have a 5% chance of exotic death, or exotic success in any given roll.. I'm not so surprised. 

My core mechanic was.. each time you roll, you had a chance of gaining experience in that skill.. when the skill experience is equal to or greater than the skill, your skill score increases. 

In Examples below.. I've quickly done the maths to show how much XP would be required to get the skill to that score. i.e. score of 5 = 15 or 1+2+3+4+5xp

back to the story...

We then took a big look at how the rolls were being made.. the first thing to start on was the Mathematics of a flat d20.

The Beginning of it all .. 

In most systems, the d20 for example, is a flat rate of advancement. each point is worth exactly the same as any other point. It matches the human mind as much as a ruler can be a balloon. Other systems were using piles of dice, while I'm ok with maths, adding up 16d6 to determine values every single combat.. slows things to a crawl.. I wanted a clean and quick system like a flat d20, but with more realism...All the literature I was reading at the time suggested that the human mind took 4 stages of learning.. so I looked into that first.

The first, the stage where you know nothing, struggle with everything, have to think about what your doing & fail constantly. You are Unaware of how Ineffective you are.. you just keep trying. So I needed characters to take an amount of time, that was fairly quick to get to a stage whereby they could sometimes perform the skill, but still have a large chance of failure...

Next, you are aware of how bad you are, you study under some master or something, and you become better faster. only showing a slight slowing in the speed of learning.

Then you begin to become pretty good at the skill, showing aptitude at performing the task.. you are aware of how good you're becoming, and are still improving, but less noticeably as you progress.

Finally, you are very very good, almost natural, but it takes months and months of effort at this stage to become just that tiny bit better. 

How to Represent that with numbers.

So, we all know that the d20 system uses 3d6 to start stats, it always had that little problem of the 1/2 and 19/20.. it felt uneven to me. The Maths of 4d6 sorta looked nice, and matched this 4 stages thing I just learnt.. but 4 dice was still clunky.. Then Shogun happened..

My Cousin and I used to play shogun, Japanese medieval warfare.. used d12s.. something majestic about the dice, I just sorta looked at it and said.. wow.. that's what I'm looking for.

The first thing that was so noticeable was the bell curve. the plain straight forward understanding that while mid point 13, is a 50/50 chance.. 1 single point of difference, up or down, is approx 9%. its the real deal, its worth far more than any other edge of the spectrum. The next point is around 7-8% (remember I'm doing this from memory, sure I could go look it up, but its the idea, not the pure maths of it) so now if you are 2 points higher than someone.. you are almost 20% better to hit them.. Its the sweet spot..

Why is it? 

I wanted players to find a 'zone' kinda like if you think about it, it many swashbuckling movies.. they dispatch the npcs pretty fast, swash here, buckle there, and you're done with the guards and fighting the mini-boss.. He's a bit of a fight.. and then you face off against the boss.. now comes the hard and drawn out battle, all your skills are pressed into this one.. until you finally defeat him..

to d20 this.. you'd need to be rolling above Thac0 1's for the guards, but 1's wouldn't be fails, they'd just be a miss for that one attack.. then the mini boss would need to be a 10, a crit couldn't be a crit, it'd just be a booster, otherwise you'd spoil the scene.. and the final boss, you'd need 20's to hit him, and only when his HP are at their last, a critical would be needed to finish him off.. 

to get such values in a D&D game, (or pathfinder these days) you'd need all the guards to be 2nd levels.. the mini boss to be 10th, and the final boss to be 18th! that'd be the most imbalanced module ever...

worse yet.. the 1st 1 against a guard would result in being flatfooted, and he'd have a chance to injure you and knock you down a peg, then the mini boss would screw through your remaining HP if you fumbled any further.. you'd critical him as a splat into the wall.. and finally the big boss would be impossible to hit, and you'd all be there roll after roll after roll.. no story.. just waiting for the dice to finally get the 20 to...

ok I'm being melodramatic.. it'd be fudged by the GM to make it more playable.. and if you have a nice GM, that's ok.. but a evil GM.. well sorry.. your evening of fun became a TPK to tell your friends.

No, I wanted something that would get those 'edges' and give more scope to play. I needed this 7th level mission to have 5th/6th level guards, a 7th level mini boss and an 8th level boss.. to ensure the right balance of enemies.. with the aforementioned variances in combat..

With 2d12.. less than 10 has a 25% chance to hit.. while less than 16 is 75% chance to hit, that's only 6 levels of difference between bad guys.. more believable that a 16th level BBG has a 13th level 2nd in command, and hires 10th level guards and I get my mathematical variance with very little shift in numbers.

Will it still work with the skill system:

So, that learning chart.. Stage #1, don't know how, or how to improve. At this stage of a skill, your score is less than 8, It took 36 xp to get to an 8.. in those days you got an xp every time you rolled, + bonuses for rolling a double 1 when you didn't need it. so you only needed to try the skill 36 times to get fairly much out of the first stage. 

Stage #2, you have 20% chance of success.. your a beginner. but you're getting better. It now takes 63 more xp to get to the mid point.. little less than double.. but that's a quick progression to get to 50% success.

by Stage #3, each point progresses you further and further into higher chances of success, +8%, +7%, +6%, +6%, +5%. by a score of 19, you have 90% chance of success, sure it took you 99xp more to get here, but with barely a 10% chance of fail, you're on the home stretch.

The Last Stage #4, you know your skill, and you know its going to take ages to get further.. Later we added in the ruling that A) if the modifier took the 'roll' above 24, you didn't get to roll, you just 'did' it. No rolling meant no xp, so the last 90 xp took much longer.. the standard 'this is easy' task was a +3 and a very easy task +6, so it became obvious to the players that an 18-21 was the point when skills needed a 'challenge' if they wanted to progress further. 

The last thing we used, was the idea of 'pass by'.. but more on that later...

So that was the start.. a nice balanced 2d12 system for Chats, Stats and skills, which had a balanced progression system, matched the reality of how we learn skills, a nice progression from zero to hero, and a set of easy pointers on how to roleplay the game for far more player friendly balance, swashbuckling adventure and a way to put the rules to one side and just play the game.  

Later, much later, I would discover how the number 12 just came to make everything in my system

Resources:

https://psygrammer.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/learning.png

Characteristics

Having come from a Dragon Warriors Background, I found that Warhammers lack of Value for simple things like Reflexes or Psychic Talent or How good Looking you were, seemed to be Problematic. Game Systems with a base Characteristic such as Strength were the fall back for things like, a character using their strength, with no extra skills to perform a task..

Sure WHFRP has Strength, but how to compare to Reflexes? Dexterity? Charisma? they didn't.. You could multiply it by 10, but we'd already begun to introduce modifiers,

Also, since we had this XP per stat system, you had to divide any strength XP by 10, and lose out on a few points.. it didn't gel, it wasn't clean. something I can't stand is game systems which have too many clauses or cases (When I was teaching English this too became a pet peeve)

So I had to go back and look at these values. What was Strength, easy.. What was Reflexes vs Dexterity.. well most references to Dexterity was Hand Eye co-ordination, while Reflexes was more about speed and dodge.. D&D had both Intelligence AND Wisdom and Charisma was considered how good looking you were, everyone knew in real life that less attractive people are more likely to be nicer.. so it seemed wrong to lump them together. Psychic Talent from Dragon Warriors didn;t seem to appear in many systems, but Gurps had Willpower too, which made sense, and many times I saw rules for courage, but it was not considered something people had, it was a skill (like you had it or not.. more on skills later again...) or it was a check against wisdom and Rank or Level.. it was all very messy.. but the names made sense to us at the time as a basic fall back..

These are things that people have, regardless of race, religion, class, creed, training or development. A child even at the age of 1 has these things.. infact that seemed to be where we were heading.. looking at a basic being from the point of view.. what does a child have that is there from the beginning.. genetically so to speak. So we had our basic stats:

Strength, Courage, Constitution, Reflexes, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Psychic, Willpower, Charisma and Looks.. years later I reverted a 'hit system' of luck, instead, to the final of 12 Characteristics.

By Mid Year of '96 we'd accomplished a new charactersheet, new basic characteristics, but we still had alot of leftover. Weapon skill, Ballistic Skill, Leadership, etc.. plus some of the new elements of Dragon Warriors.. Defence, Magical Attack and Magical Defence, Stealth and Perception..They were all there.. all messily bunched together.