Stats Sytem, need advices

[Caracol]

Carrie,
  I think you are close, but maybe need a little tweaking:
Rationality vs. Spontaneity
  The problem with this is, a normal character will embrace one of these and not see any use for the other. Maybe you need to name them in a more appealing/essential way. Like Planning vs. Improvisation. You need to be able to both plan and improvise, but usually, you can't do both.

Planning and Improvisation are merged within the Rationality vs. Spontaneity couple. The former makes you good at elaborating big plans balancing all the factors there might be, while the latter is  about just live by the moment and let your emotions take control. Of course, the two encompass several different things in addition. I'm still working on the definition of all the different abilities (what means to be "rational" or "spontaneous"): maybe when these definitions are ready I will be able to set the opposites better and maybe rework them.
I don't see why a character wouldn't find both approaches useful. When you generate a character, the abilities aren't taken as "all rational" or "all spontaneous"; they aren't a black-or-white preference, but more like a gradient between two opposite approach. Remember, your ability score doesn't represent how "rational", "spontaneous" "conflictual" or "whatever" you are, but which approach you do prefer.. It's a matter of character personality and tendency, not of evaluating your inner capabilities. In this context, a character could be fine with both approach and have a 0 in both, to represent equilibrium. This lead us to the next question.

Body vs. Knowledge
  So, you are saying, in your setting, there there are no supremely fit people who are not also smart. Is that the message you intend to give? An Olympic athlete is necessarily a dimwit?
  What about Streetwise vs Nobility I think this gets at the heart of what you are trying to say, but comes at it from a different angle. Certainly any character would want both, but by necessity, could never attain it.

Of course there are people both smart and clever. Knowledge isn't "how intelligent you are" but "how much stuff do you know". Simple as that. What I'm trying to say is "time to train is little, what do you prefer?" Having to improve your body shape leaves you little time to spend on books or other means or gaining informations,and viceversa. It's not a matter of intellingence (that is not even defined in this game by a single stat), it's a matter of preference, of what approach do you favour.

Combat vs. Comprehension
  So, again, you are overlooking great generals who were soldiers and scholars. Alexander the Great, Patton, Napoleon, etc. What about Valor vs Compassion or Strategy vs Tactics?

Conflict vs. Compromise
  This one is actually pretty good. I think I would use another pair for what this symbolizes. But I don't think mine would be any better than what you are already using.

  Either way, you have a great base to build your game on. Keep up the good work.

I actually merged the two in Conflict vs. Comprehension. Your combat abilities are represented in how do you prefer being Conflictual, and solving everything with direct confrontations and fight. This also makes you aggressive and less prone to the comprehension of the enemy, or to cooperate with your group.
Comprehension is to ability to "stop and think" before acting recklessly, and to be more oriented to cooperation, compromise and solving problem without necessarely fight somebody.

I'm also convinced of the couple Agility (both mental and phisical) vs. Steadyness (being decisive and dedicated to your ideas, but also being able to overcome pain and temptations by force of will). How about this one? Think it might work?

Uncertainity is easy. Suspense is hard. It depends more on you valuing the outcomes, less on you not knowing the outcomes. I'd rather focus on making people care. But this is a different topic and shouldn't be further adressed here I think.

How do you suggest to make players care?

Nah, it was meant for a game with as little fighting as possible. If the more I kill, the sooner I turn into a monster, I will probably try solving situations without killin'. I'd think it would be a game about what to kill for (less "how to kill").
Another stat could be "Getting away". Roll under to get away, roll over to stand and fight when it counts. "Magic": roll under to fry the evil henchmen with magic fire, roll over to overcome the horrible temptation to just get her love through wizardry. "Nobility": roll under to rule the easily impressed, roll over to care for the dirty and poor. "Smarts": roll under to see the details, roll over to not miss the big picture. And so on.

You're giving me a lot of good ideas on how Combat Styles, Techniques and Magic could work. I'll request your advices on this subject more specifically soon. Your suggestions are really interesting for what regards temptations and moral choices in characters, and when do they start to be dominated by their approaches and tendencies rather than use them. Really nice, but let's leave it for later.

What I would do if I was you is I would write down a few example conflicts, purely prose, a few different, but satisfying outcomes for these conflicts, and then I would check if my rules cover, no, ENFORCE that. Like, every single solution the rules should allow for should be fun and enjoyable.
Right now, you got a certain numerological beauty going on, the aesthetics of symmetry, but personally, I'm not too sure what kind of play it should make for. This is not bad, not in the slightest, but it helps, I found, when I try to see rules outcome based, not process or justification based.

I mean, your rules are probably fine, but I guess it would help if you checked with yourself what they are fine for.

This is also a really good suggestion. About how my system should be played and if it's fine, well, that's what playtesting is for, but I wanted to state the basic abilities and rules first. After that, I might consider to modify them silghty or to changing them completely. Let's see... How about I write down a possible fight, then I comment what happened and how I plan to use the rules, and then you people ask questions, clarifications and suggest me how the system should be reworked?

One form of suspense could be had by allowing some sort of accumulation towards an actual resolution check, without knowing what the results along the way are.

For instance, let us say a player wants to use insulting comments to get an aristocrat to lose his cool, and challange him to a duel. If you had a limited number of attempts, but did not know how far to go, and insulting someone itself definitely carries a social cost, you are investing without knowing what will actually happen.

Likewise, you could say that it takes 3 successes before you check to see if he loses his cool. If there is other action that is pacing these checks, you are working on some other conflict, while trying to accumulate a chance at success in a side conflict.

For instance, fighting a duel while making jibes and leading comments hoping they will blurt out something inciminating. So every round we check on the fights progress, but meanwhile we are hoping to survive long enough to get him to the point he might break and blather something good.

I'm just making up stuff. To me, Suspense is about wondering what is going to happen, and you wonder more if you have both current effort invested in the outcome, as well as further consequences when the result is revealed.

Nice. But instead of making this a part of the basic Task or Conflict resolution system, I see it better for the specifical rules described in Styles, Techniques and Magic. Each one of these allows the character to new uses of the existing basic rules, to get new result (and conveying suspense like this). We'll get to it eventually. Gotta go again, I really appreciate all your useful feedback.

[soundmasterj]

How about I write down a possible fight, then I comment what happened and how I plan to use the rules, and then you people ask questions, clarifications and suggest me how the system should be reworked?

Yes. I think this helps a lot.

RE:suspense, I really mean it when I say I think this isn't the place for it. We should make a new thread, if at all. I've done some research on the psychology of suspense (nice stuff,  William Brewer and others did a lot of interesting experiments) that I feel is highly applicable to RPG design, but I haven't got too much time to waste right now and I don't know which forum to put it into.
Basically, to create suspense, you need somebody others value and the possibility of that person suffering harm. And when it comes to RPGs, the "possibility" and "value" of the equation are a lot less well researched compared to "suffer harm".


But I think this thread would benefit from staying on topic: stats.