New skill minimum UE buy-in
Teaching new players to build functional characters

Several times now I have helped new players who have made characters with their starting UE spread across so many skills that none of their skills would do anything, versus if they had simply invested the maximum possible starting points in a primary skill and the remainder in a second, they would have had at least one functional skill to start the game with and maybe two -- instead of none.

Likewise I don't think the system always communicates well to new players that 1 UE can be a absolutely miniscule investment in most skills, and my experience is that new players will disproportionately have many stops and starts in skills and end up with many more non-functional 'vestigial' skills compared to veteran players.

My suggestions would be these:

- Set a minimum UE buy-in that players must spend to open a new skill up for development, doesn't have to be a lot (say 20 UE) but I think it would communicate that spreading UE around many skills can lead to some being not functional until focused on. This UE wouldn't be lost on the buy-in, it would be just as if they had spent X UE normally.

- By default have new players simply choose 1st and 2nd skills from the list at chargen, with the 1st skill being assigned the maximum points, and the 2nd being assigned the remainder. This would ensure that a character has at least one skill they can enter the game with and do at least something with it. The fine-tuned point assignation could be kept as an advanced option at chargen for veterans or new players who wanted to go wide.

https://www.sindome.org/archetypes/

I have created characters who started with four skills and they did fine. I have seen some start with half a dozen and they did fine. I dislike extreme min-maxing and the second option is basically trying to train players to do this.

As beandip said, there are archetype pages (in game and on the website) that give SOME guidance. I would, however, be open to providing more. Instead of mechanics that force min-maxing, I'd rather update a few things.

One would skill descriptions so you don't have as many PCs coming in with multiples unarmed combat skills on accident or with melee and swords because they thought melee helped swords.

Another would be to add a room right before stats and skills with helpful build information. Like, explaining that unlike many popular RPGs, stats in Sindome range just as widely as skills. Like directing the players to information on stats and skills (hopefully with updated skill descriptions. Directing players to read over the archetypes. Then maybe explaining that having more than four skills at start will mean that those skills will be far less effective.

Then let players make the character they want to make.

I still don't know much about the mechanics, but I will say that warnings that you often won't or can't do the things you thought you were going to right off the bat as they might require expensive equipment or be things that are prohibited where you start, might be good. That was a very discouraging revelation for me at the start of the game.

As a new player starting with skills that are... either mechanically or environmentally difficult to use was challenging. While your RP, willingness to get involved and take risks, and hustle are more a determination of your "success" than coded skills. If you are new, that can be hard to figure out and having a profession and skills which are useful out of the gate would help.

The option would still be there for a player to make any kind of character they wanted, but I think it's completely off-base to consider leaving character creation with 2 skills as 'min maxed'. That is often the bare minimum of functionality for some skills.

It's not try-hard optimization for players to expect if they choose a skill at character creation, they can do something codedly with that skill when they enter the game.

What veteran players can do and what brand new players will want to do are two entirely different things. I do think there are UX designs that can be considered that don't involve making players read another help-file novel which could help update Sindome's approach for a modern audience.

Do you want to be able to spend 1-19 UE in skills and feel like your character wouldn't be authentic otherwise?

That's fine, because my suggestion was to still allow players to configure their skills however they wished as an advanced option. And if players feel it's their God-given right to put 1UE in every skill, then perhaps a prompt on new skill buy-ins could accommodate this minority. I think 10/20 UE is a pretty minor ask though.

But realistically, c'mon, you're a veteran player, who would not be inconvenienced by the systems being made slightly more intuitive for new players. Nothing about these changes would impact veterans in any way, unless they were dying to have tiny amounts of UE in as many skills as possible.

@Beandip

Yes, or those with non-functional builds with skills that might relate to one another in other games, but don't in Sindome's particular implementation of them.

Skill adjectives are arbitrary descriptors. They provide roleplaying guidance about a character's relative skill level but they say absolutely nothing at all about how functional those skills will be in a coded way at any given point, which varies from skill to skill.

Some skills are functional at the bottom end of the range, others require significantly more investment before characters can clear the necessary breakpoints to start doing everyday things with them. The adjectives don't communicate anything about this or the distinctions between skill level progressions.

This is rather tangential as well, but the system also doesn't communicate that some skills are adversarial and a character's skill is only relevant relative to other characters, and that other skills will be fixed progressions.

These suggestions aren't necessarily the correct ones (I've also previously suggested new characters start the game with no skills at all), or suggestions that would solve every issue with the new player experience -- but I do think the skill system is unintuitive and is something that new players will often struggle with.

I know sine veterans will die on a hill to make sure the game they learned doesn't change, but this is a highly unintuitive game that has survived because it's adapted slowly over time. We can improve the new player experience and still have all the same depth.

I really like the idea of the option to use something like a personality quiz to build a character. Could make things more accessable for people who aren't used to manually allocating stat and skill points. Keeping the manual way of course.

@0x1mm

That's a good point about how the U-A representation says nothing about if the skill will be codedly useful or not. Some are fairly intuitive, but a mention of it (if there isn't one already) would be good. I've had issues where I codedly couldn't do something but thought I was just doing something wrong oocly.