Blurring attributes and skills

[DevP]

Most RPGs do have a relatively standard attribute / skill dichotomy. I was recently tooling with my system of choice when I realized that it was very easy mechanically to handle them with the same terminology, without any changes to the mechanic. A side effect seemed to be an emphasis on improving only specific aspects of an attribute, rather than the aspet overall...

So basically, have players spend on both Skills and "Raw Skills" - specialized attributes bought within the skill framework. Then, to do anything of interest, they should combine up to two skills (adding their values) for the task. This has interesting possibilities.

I like this better, but I also realized that it might be harder to get people used to the idea of declaring two skills at once - saying "I'm using Firearms and Accuracy" instead of merely saying "Firearms!".

Dunno. My question (finally) is: is the obfuscation balanced by the potential flexibility?

[Andrew Martin]

Dunno. My question (finally) is: is the obfuscation balanced by the potential flexibility?

Miyamoto Mushashi wrote (in the Book of Five Rings) that his skill in sword combat was improved by his experience in carpentry, as was his skill in directing battles. Does this mechanic allow players and their PC to be as flexible as this real life experience?

Check out this site: http://www.reciprocality.org/Reciprocality/r0/Day1.html about Mappers and Packers, and see if that applies.

[Daniel Solis]

I always thought that traits are traits are traits. My initial plan for the PUNK system, and one which I may return to by the time it's complete, is to have players just choose their character's traits without worrying if they have too many "knowledges" or too few "skills." All the traits have the same mechanical importance so long as they're relevant to the situation. Part of the gamist aspect of the system is convincing the GM, like in the case of Musashi, that your character's carpentry experience is relevant in a swordfight.

EDIT: As an addendum, I did try to reward players with super-specific traits considering the rarity of the situation in which they would be explicitly relevant. This was also to discourage players from just taking "Good at stuff" twenty times.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Dev and everyone,

Bang on exactly, correct.

Here's an older thread which presents the outlook I'd developed quite a while even before that - it references some older discussions too.

Attributes or skills, but not both?

Now there are a few games which do some interesting tricks with attributes vs. skills representing different and distinct aspects of a single Fortune mechanic, rather than just contributing quantity to a target number. I suggest that Godlike, Little Fears, Arrowflight, Ironclaw, The Burning Wheel, Swashbuckler, and The Riddle of Steel all bear a close look for this purpose.

Best,
Ron

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Out of hubris, I have to mention the game I'm working on, The Shadow of Yesterday, in respect to this. (You can see an unfinished, first draft version at http://www.anvilwerks.com/rpg/tsoy/.)

Characters have pools called Vigor, Instinct, and Reason. These take the place of normal attributes, but aren't a measure of ability. Instead, they're a measure of reserves the character can draw on, spending them for bonus dice on skills, or to activate special abilities called Secrets.

An example:

Violet, a swordswoman of Khale, is fighting a huge wolf-bear aberration. The bear has immense amounts of Vigor, plus the Secret of Overwhelming Size, giving it a bonus die in every attack. While she has a greater skill at fighting, the bonus die is helping the animal win. Her player decides to spend a point of Instinct to dodge the creature's attack, and then a point of Vigor next action to drive her swordpoint into the beast's side. The bonus die in each action allows the player to roll an extra die, and drop the lowest die from her pool.

[HMT]

I always thought that traits are traits are traits ...

I agree. Consider Over the Edge, Storyboard, etc.

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, this sort of design is actually pretty common at this point. Hero Wars is a favorite of mine that comes to mind (not to mention every game that I've designed of late). Not to be patronizing, Dev, but you're coming to this conclusion pretty late in the game, and it's pretty much a done deal at this point. The decision to put in layers should be a measured one, and it often makes just as much sense to do only one layer, if not more.

Heck, one of my standard rants is about typical problems with skill/attribute systems; all easily avoided with "single layer" mechanics. The dual layer is an accident of evolution anyhow. In early games without skills, there were "attributes". This model continued with skills added on using different systems for each. Later people noted that there was really to difference in abilities of any sort, and that it was easier to handle it all the same mechanically. So, unless you have a good reason to use a dual layer, you ought not to do it.

Remember the key to this, however. One of two things must be true for this to work. Either the character must have a list of standard traits that cover every possible action (ala Sorcerer), or, if the character doesn't have some ability listed, they have it at "average" (ala Hero Wars, which defaults to a score of 6). List "below average" scores as negative amounts, or as positive amounts of negative traits. So, either -4 Strength, or Weak 4.

Mike

[DevP]

Not to be patronizing, Dev, but you're coming to this conclusion pretty late in the game, and it's pretty much a done deal at this point.

LOL. Quite right; I just recently discovered the lands of Indie-RPGs. (I'm just getting over addiction to turn-based combat-specific rules and the attribute/skill dichotomy, and it's fun!) I wasn't trying to introduce a "new" idea at all. My only question was if newbies would have trouble thinking of employing multiple skills combined for a task. (It's like when I was trying to teach them Active Exploits, and a reaction was "of COURSE I'm using as much of my strength as possible, all the time"...) Having given it some thought, I don't think it's an important problem at all.

I have indeed accounted for having all the traditional "attributes" assumed to be average unless specified otherwise.

[Daniel Solis]

My only question was if newbies would have trouble thinking of employing multiple skills combined for a task.

From my admittedly loose playtesting, people had no trouble finding creative ways to prove the relevance of traits to seemingly unrelated tasks. The easy traits are the ones that describe personality, like "brave" applying to anything involving bravery of any sort. The more tricky ones, and the more creative justifications came from the more specialized traits.

For example, one player was playing a hapless TV chef caught in the middle of a mistaken identity crime caper. He's surrounded by knife-throwing yakuza assassins. He has no combat skills per se, but he suggested that his "Culinary Showmanship" (cooking things in front of an audience with flair and pizzazz) would give him the ability to catch thrown daggers. I got such a good chuckle out of it that I let him use that trait for the action and he succeeded at it too. Lots of fun there.

The lesson here, if there is one to be had, is that if a player has suitable incentive, he can justify the use of almost any trait and have fun while doing it.

[Valamir]

The lesson here, if there is one to be had, is that if a player has suitable incentive, he can justify the use of almost any trait and have fun while doing it.

There's a player in one of Ron's Groups that I got to play Hero Wars with over Gen Con.  He was a master of what I call "Rubber Banding"...where you take a Trait and stretch the crap out if it to get it to apply.

[Daniel Solis]

There's a player in one of Ron's Groups that I got to play Hero Wars with over Gen Con.  He was a master of what I call "Rubber Banding"...where you take a Trait and stretch the crap out if it to get it to apply.

That's a damned good term. Mind if I borrow it?

[iago]

Dunno. My question (finally) is: is the obfuscation balanced by the potential flexibility?

Miyamoto Mushashi wrote (in the Book of Five Rings) that his skill in sword combat was improved by his experience in carpentry, as was his skill in directing battles.

That's a very interesting quote, and applies nicely to the way we "force" skills to develop in (the effectively attributeless) Fate.  Developing characters from phase to phase, the player is required to periodically "balance" their skillset such that it forms a "pyramid" -- where each successive higher level has fewer skills on that "rung" than the level immediately below it (e.g., 1 3-pt skill, 2 2-pt skills, and 3 1-pt skills).  The idea here is that all of your experience "shores up" your peak skills -- much as with Musashi, he might have a number of 1-pt skills (including carpentry) that supported (in the pyramid structure) his higher-point sword and tactics skills.

This front-loads the whole "how does my basket weaving help my swordsmanship" thing, though, into the character creation system.  Skills aren't combined -- the "effects" of having carpentry in the mix have already been factored into the fact that I was able to buy my Sword skill up as high as I did.  It's another way to hit the same goal, I think.

[Windthin]

This is my first post here, in case anybody wonder "who in five hells and a few heavens is that?"  I only just recently learned of this forum, though I've been doing world and system creation for some years now.  Anyhow, that brief little intro out of the way...

I chose this thread to post in first because it's a subject that caught my eye, and I've often agonized over.  Most games do indeed focus heavily on either "Stats" or "Skills", as they're most commonly called in my experience.  There's a problem often getting the two to work together.  Some solve this, I've seen, by providing very few stats and bending them, as mentioned above under rubber-banding, to fit as many skills as possible.  Others don't even try, and still others use stats only moderately to modify a vast array of skills.  The correct balance... is something I am still searching for, and will likely have to settle in the end, as it's not really possible to utterly quantify reality (ours or that of the game in question).

Something I've been toying around with is a set-up that assumes a base level of ability based on an average (not always a precise average, but not the simple addition) of several attributes, upon which the skill is built; two factors, essentially, a base that can grow slowly or barely or moderately, depending on what attributes are connected with it, and perhaps the larger portion, which represents experience, training, time put into perfecting the skill.  I'm still not certain how this will work... but I am hoping it will address the... clash these two areas seem to have in almost every system I've ever encountered, more or less.

I don't suppose that does much, sadly, to link skills together as strongly as you might be suggested in the quote by the sometimes controversial Musashi, but I wonder if perhaps a ripple effect, circles within circles, could be used to allow related skills to effect each other.  The problem with that, of course... is who defines what skills benefit each other?  One might make arguments all around.  I just don't know, it's rather late, and I'm prone to ramble on a little more if I don't cut off now... but I'd love to get some feedback.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Windthin,

Welcome to the Forge!

One notion that's influenced a lot of people here is that looking for the One Best Way isn't going to work out well. Instead, if you consider the goals of play that the rules-set is supposed to help facilitate, then The Best Way For This is much easier to figure out.

For instance, Castle Falkenstein has no "attributes" as commonly constructed; a character has a list of skills. (Some of them are pretty general, like "Tough" or "Brilliant," but they are treated in mechanics terms like the skills are.)

On the other hand, Amber has no "skills" as commonly constructed; a character has a list of attributes. (One of them is pretty skills-applicable, but it's treated in mechanics terms like the attributes are.)

Hero Wars (now re-titled Hero Quest) is the king hell champion of game design in fixing any and all hassles that have arisen in previous games with attributes vs. skills - everything is an "ability" and treated identically in play with any other ability, including the potential to influence other abilities' effectiveness.

In direct contrast with Hero Wars, Arrowflight and Little Fears do indeed use both attributes and skills, but they are very different mechanics-entities, rather than just contributors to a target number or roll value.

So my overall point is, think in terms of the goals of the game design (which is kind of a short-hand for saying, "the play-goals that the design encourages") ... and one of the above options should work nicely for it.

Best,
Ron

[Windthin]

Thanks, Ron.

I can see your point, and am actually thinking toward that; this is a dillema I found in games I worked on in the past, one I see somewhat in a game I am currently involved in that might give HQ there a run for its money so far as winds of change go (characters I have for it from several years ago... or even a year ago... are utterly unrecognizable almost as being from the system at times), and one I am actively seeking to remedy in my own.  Guess you could say that for me it's a pressing issue, something I want to at least... moderate in the systems I am working on for two worlds I've been designing.  This is in large part because it's also been a concern to my target crowd (I have a fairly sizable group from my old game still hoping I'll get one or both of these up and running), but I think it's also partly my own drive for realism... to make things interconnect within the characters.  Yeah... I know I shall not find a perfect path: it does not exist.  I am trying to quantify people, basically.  I guess I am just hoping for a system a little more... believable than the last, if you know what I am saying.  Very good comments there, and thank you for the insight.  I am still getting my feel for this forum, and dove straight in (I tend to learn as I go, but learn fast).

Gratefully,
Windthin