Selecting Attributes For Your Game

[brianbloodaxe]

Most (not all) traditional RPS use:

Physique or Strength & Constitution
Reflexes or Dexterity & Agility
Wits or Intelligence & Perception
Presence or Charisma & Willpower

Other attributes will occasionally be added in, Looks, Luck, Karma etc but most games fit into that pattern. Note that in these example many of the names have been changed but they still fit the pattern.

DnD
Strength & Constitution
Dexterity
Intelligence
Charisma & Wisdom

Burning Wheel
Power & Forte
Agility & Speed
Perception
Will

a|state
Strength & Health
Dexterity & Agility
Intelligence & Awareness
Personality & Willpower

Dragon Warriors
Strength
Reflexes
Intelligence
Psychic Talent
and Looks tacked on the end

I'm not sure if it will be any use to you Vordark but I use this chart of four to eight stats as the starting point when I am designing a system. If it is going to be combat heavy I will probably use four physical stats and two mental/spiritual stats. For a game of political intrigue you could probably reverse that. In a game of psychological horror you will probably want to focus on your characters ability to deal with stress and horror (Will) and also their persuasion/social abilities (Charisma) but intelligence and Perception can probably be merged into one stat (Wits) for simplicity and you only really need to know vaguely how fast your characters can run and how much damage they can take (so Physique and Reflextes are plenty, maybe even too much).

Some games match them up even further:
Tristat/BESM
Body or Strength & Constitution & Dexterity & Agility
Mind or Intelligence & Perception
Soul or Charisma & Willpower

It is interesting as well to note some of the game which deviate from this structure. For example:
GURPS
Strength & Health
Dexterity
Intelligence

One of the most common complaints about Gurps is that it has no stat covering Willpower or Charisma. They have tried to cover for this with Advantages but they have never managed to everyone's satisfaction.

Other games that throw this attribute arrangement out include the World of darkness games, the Silhouette games from Dream Pod 9 all of which I feel have too many stats, some of which are redundant. The Silhouette attributes are particularly unbalanced:
Build & Fitness
Agility
Creativity & Perception & Knowledge
Influence & Willpower & Psyche
and Appearance

Six mental/social attributes but only three physical ones in a fairly cinematic, action-heavy game? When running Tribe 8 I doubled the cost of advancing Agility relative to the other stats and it was still briken!

This table of 4/8 stats is far from the only way to do it but I certainly find it a good guide. using it to look at your stats we get
Body
Physique (which I would call Reflexes)
Mind
Presence & Charisma & Willpower

So that is a heavy emphasis on the less tangible stats at the spiritual/social end of the scale. I would say that in most settings you will have significant overlap and redundancy in your Presence and Charisma stats and overall your stats are leaning more towards subtle horror or intrigue and won't be a lot of use in a cinematic, tactical or action-heavy game.

[SteveMND]

Which attributes would you choose to have for such a game?

This is an interesting thread, as I've recently slid my own system out of the mothballs (where it has effectively sat since college) and started to actually begin work on it again.  I ended up revisiting a lot of the aspects, but one of them that I still liked and didn't change was the approach to Attributes.

It's intended to be a bit of a 'generic' system as well, and to that effect, I wanted the mechanics to be as streamlined and 'universal' in application as possible.  I ended up with 12 Attributes, which may seem high, but they are grouped into three collections of four each, each of which apply to the Physical, Mental or Spiritual aspects of the character in a similar manner.

These four represent the same qualities in each of the three Facets, just applied to the different aspects of the character.  There is a Force Attribute, a Resistance Attribute, an Active Attribute and a Reactive Attribute.  Thus as far as the Physical goes, Strength represents the Force (how intensely a character can affect the world around him). Constitution represents the Resistance (how much the character can withstand from the world around him).   Dexterity represents the Active (how precisely the character can apply his Force to the outside world).  Finally, Agility represents the Reactive (how well the character can mitigate the impact done to his Resistance).

These four Attributes apply in an equal fashion for both the Mental and Spiritual facets of a character, and use essentially the same mechanics to resolve a sword blow as they do to resolve a political debate or an attempt to convert a follower to your religion.

- Steve M

[JoyWriter]

If the expected "value" of stats given what you know about the setting for which they are designed is pretty even, then I suppose I'd call that some kind of balance. This automatically assumes that players will be trading one description of their characters ability for another. There are other assumptions, like those that do not allow point assignment sharing between different types of stat, up to and including those that assign stats randomly.

If you have random stats, it could be argued that balance forms no obstacle, assuming they stay random for the entire course of their use (being able to add points to them at your leisure through xp puts them in the first category again).

But why bother creating that balance in the first place? Well for some players, many in fact, setting the attributes of their character is about building up their character's identity. Having to concern themselves with what the right stat mix is in some "objective" sense nullifies the choice they have in deciding the stat combination that looks right to them. In other words it's about removing the pragmatic from their decision making process, leaving it almost totally aesthetic.

If the above is true, and it is true for some players, then one way to improve a system is to adjust the costs for the different stats until you have a cost scheme you think is fair, then split the stat that costs more into smaller pieces, or merge the weaker/cheaper stats together. The choice is then stripped of it's investment connotations.

I would stay away from doing the latter (joining stats) too much though, as a classic reason for differentiating stats is to be able to say "my character is ___ but not ____".

So he is fit and healthy but not good at lifting, or he is good at making speeches but not at unprepared conversation. Stats allow us to say that in numerical form, and I suspect that many stat and skill lists could be created based on variations on that principle, starting at "just some guy"! If we could make rules for defining those boundaries that worked pretty well I think we'd have a great advantage!

Incidentally I'm not talking about "more than human/less than human", but where each stat is nuanced by the addition of a distinction that increases it's value on one side an decreases it on the other, with the rules helping to solve the battle of how it applies! I'm fond of the idea of "lowest difference wins" where if one is +1 and the other -2, then the +1 becomes the most common, dividing up the ambiguous region largely in it's favour. This can easily lead to +1 vs -6 with one extreme weakness that enemies would give their left arm to know.

[Callan S.]

These threads always make me think "Why has the question gone straight to what attributes to have? Where was the discussion on "Should I have attributes at all?" or even "How do I want to handle things? Attributes come to mind as a handling method, but its just one method and there are probably other methods I don't know about or haven't been invented yet"

[MacLeod]

Perhaps they have... but decided to resort to a familiar method instead?

[brianbloodaxe]

These threads always make me think "Why has the question gone straight to what attributes to have? Where was the discussion on "Should I have attributes at all?" or even "How do I want to handle things? Attributes come to mind as a handling method, but its just one method and there are probably other methods I don't know about or haven't been invented yet"

Looking back I think the OP was pretty clear that he wanted to discuss how to use Attributes and not what alternatives there are, however worthy that line of discussion may be.

[Devenger]

Reading the stuff above leads me to conclude: There is no set of attributes that will gel perfectly with any type, style or genre of game. If you haven't already, consider making many or all of the attributes players need to write down somewhat modular, or put more bluntly ignorable.

Have some allowance in your system for removing the requirement for having a value for an attribute entirely, for the case where the attribute is almost universally unimportant (Strength for a setting where physical actions are significantly devalued), or alternatively where the attribute is almost universally important for all characters and you don't want players to involve themselves in trying to maximise it (for my system, Intelligence where I want it to be assumed all player characters are smart enough to learn any traditionally Intelligence-based skill they wish).

Where the attribute would be used for resolution, suggest Game Masters assume a value fairly applicable to all player characters (it's fair to assume a hacker in a barfight will not be exceptionally stronger than any other hacker unless otherwise specified). For where a player really wants that attribute to be more defined for their character specifically, and it's not going to give them an edge in normal conflicts - a suspiciously brawny hacker, perhaps - provide, or allow the GM to create, a Trait/Advantage/Widget to allow this differentiation without making every other player need to generate more numbers.

I see this as increasing the complexity of the rules the GM sees, and their decision process, to decrease the requirement of players to get involved in the messy world of working out what attributes are really applicable. In my opinion, this is worth it, but it may clash with the objective of making the game approachable to an inexperienced or less rules-writing Game Master.

[JoyWriter]

or allow the GM to create, a Trait/Advantage/Widget to allow this differentiation without making every other player need to generate more numbers.

That's the kind of thing I was suggesting although I explicitly combined advantage and disadvantage together, so you are making distinctions about your skill, rather than simply adding to it. This means that you hopefully don't need a points system for advantages, which might bring back the old problem of "but if I don't use these points, aren't I wasting them?".

Callan, I think there was a thread in actual play on traits/advantages, you could add to that, or start a new one in that vein perhaps?

[Gurnard]

How about breaking down a list of every possible attribute you could have for a game or every general (not skill-specific) thing about a person you would want to simulate.

The entire below list is descriptions only, avoiding conventional attribute names. It's up to the level of detail of simulation and the feel of the game as to how many of the attributes are used, which are rolled together into a single stat, which are necessarily correlated and therefore should be derived.

Please feel free to add to the list, there's obviously going to be hundreds more.

The Master List

1.   Absorb and retrieve information
2.   Charm or otherwise favourably influence others by body language, verbal qualities and behaviour
3.   Project presence
4.   React quickly to changes in situation
5.   Immediately notice or intuit details
6.   Reason and calculate with available information
7.   Dodge out of the way of something
8.   Brute force/explosive muscle power/lift
9.   Muscle stamina/carrying capacity
10.   Running speed
11.   Physical bulk/mass
12.   Sense of balance
13.   Fluidity of movement
14.   Quickness of gross body movement
15.   Quickness of fine body movement
16.   Physically absorb injury by muscle tone
17.   Physically absorb injury by muscular/skeletal flexibility
18.   Maintain presence of mind under mental stress
19.   Maintain presence of mind under physical trauma
20.   Original thought, imagination
21.   Practical/mechanical deduction, problem-solving
22.   Decision making, objectivity
23.   Fine motor skills
24.   Resist physical fatigue
25.   Resist mental fatigue
26.   Physical attractiveness

[chance.thirteen]

Two things:
Note: I am attracted to creating game designs more along the sim-what happens if you do this style of play, meaning I like Attributes, and probably like more challenges to the characters abilities than a purely story creation focussed player would enjoy.

1) To have or not have? As has been mentioned, many many games get by on assuming that you will have some average level of ability in any thing. Even Gurps can be reduced to all Traits, as they assume 10s in the four basic stats, and from there you can proceed through their various charts. How much detail is a matter of game design, whether you show values at an assumed level is more a matter of taste. That said, certain genres really seem to pop on certain traits, and I personally prefer to know that you are only average in said traits, just as a flavor reminder.

2) The ultimate way I have tried to generate a maximum number of traits is similar to many efforts.

I named every single minute stage or type of a conflict I wanted (which went something like this: prediction, apperception (based on a usage of appercevoir meaning spotting as soon as possible), analysis of content, choice of response, correct tactical choices of action, power of action, finesse of action, resistance via finesse (eg dodge), resistance via protection (eg an overriding social concern), resistance via toughness (eg a tough mind), a health track of some sort.

Then I define every arena of conflict and action I could want: physical, interpersonal, intellectual, spiritual, magical, societal, political, military, economical.

That makes a huge grid which you can try to fill in if you desire. Very quickly you will see that certain combinations make no sense to you, or perhaps to your desired game. Likewise, I found that in my anecdotal understanding of real life and fiction, certain traits were always linked, and two or more grid squares were merged. Then I usually agree that many of the arenas aren't necessary, or could be handled in a different fashion. You'll note that the larger arenas at the end end up better for describing groups and their abilities, which is intended as I like group conflicts.

Usually I end up with a design where the most basic physical traits of the body are rated as an attribute, and everything else is an advantage that requires no mentioning unless you have it.