The Forge Archives

Alright, homeboys. This is what I've got it down to:

Killin’ (an’ doin’)
STRength
DEXterity
STAmina

Thunkin’ (an’ clevers)
PERception
INTelligence
WITs

Talkin’ (an’ plottin’, an’ lookin’)
CHARisma
MANipulation
APPearance

I've just realized these are standard for WW stuff. Either way, it is in no way meant to be groundbreaking (in the context of breaking ground) nor earthshattering (ooh, we wouldn't want that). Just what I think is a nice and well-rounded listy of attributes.

P.S. I think you will agree it is by far the most Ultimate on a scale of one to Ultimate.

Why do you need 9?

Seems like Killin, Thinkin', and Talkin' do the job with much more color and much less fuss.

Want more differentiation?  Add descriptors or modifiers.

Killin' (Brick Shithouse)
Thinkin' (Smarter than your average rock)
Talkin" (Two or Three words anyway...on a good day)

Bam, done.  The rest of that stuff gives me the shivers.

I agree with Ralph, with the caveat that it depends on what kind of game your making.  The 3 headings seem indicative of a certain type of setting, they add good color and you can easily abstract all the sub attributes from the main 3.

I have used almost the same abilities, but I have only Charisma, and I'm not yet sure about its all uses? What are the differences between your charisma, manipulation and appearance?

Oh, and this isn't nearly as bad as the system I am using, where there are Str/Dex for general sporty actioncs, str + constitution(or stamina) for long runs and dex+int for reflexes...

- Endoperez -

You forgot a category.

Hopin'
Drive
Passion
Destiny

(yes, I forgot Faith, Conscience, and Luck, but I never liked luck, and conscience and faith can be rolled into drive or passion...)

;-)

yrs--
--Ben

Hehe. I agree with Valamir. That makes much more sense.

To create an accurate model of the Universe, you'd have to make a construct larger than the Universe itself.  Thusly, all games are abstractions of possible actions.  In these cases, I think it is an excellent list of commonly used attributes.  This is not to say that these are the be all and end all.  They could be condensed, expanded, redistributed, et al ad infinitum.  Say you had an RPG where all the PCs were brains in jars...  then the character sheets would suddenly contain many more mental attributes than physical (Dodge would be a difficult attribute to justify, no?).  Such is the nature of being.   One could easily create an infinitely large list of attribute scores to rate and roll against... but that would be an exercise in madness.

So, you know...  good list.

If you're creating a finite list of traits for your game, you should be very selective about the traits make the final cut. Whatever skills, attributes or talents you put into your game are a subtle way of telling the players what they will likely be doing when they play your game. The abstraction of some traits ("athletics") and specification of others ("social engineering") is another way of showing what sorts of activities are most relevant to your game.

But, if you want to run a "surprise game" (where everyone makes a normal, modern-day human character, and finds out what the genre is once they're playing, the 9-attribute list is about as good as it gets.

(I'm a big fan of the surprise game... the players can't really maximize their characters for any one task, which leads to more well-rounded characters. Also, without kewl powerz at first, they have to actually create lifestyles, motivations, and personalities.)

I'm using the nine attribute system for both of the (non-commercial) games I'm designing (although my superhero universe replaces Stamina with Toughness, since superheroes don't experience muscle fatigue like normal humans do).

-Jeff

Forgive such an obvious question, but doesn't Storyteller have the exact same attributes?

Personally, I always saw Manipulation as more of a skill than an attribute.  I also can see as much justification for splitting Dexterity into Agility and Precision as I can see for having Strength and Stamina separate (and either way would work).  I also think Willpower should be an attribute, but Storyteller uses Willpower a bit differently and gives it more attention.

Then there's attributes from other games like Cool, Chutzpah, Faith, Angst, Sanity, etc.  Depends on what's important.

Bad Omen, there can't possibly be an "ultimate" list of attributes; it's much to dependent on what you intend to do with them.

When I was brought on board to help design Multiverser, it had fourteen attributes already, and I left those intact. The list is

[*]Persuasion[*]Charisma[*]Animal Magnetism[*]Strength[*]Stamina[*]Resistance[*]Density[*]Hand/Eye[*]Agility[*]Flexibility[*]Intellect[*]Intuition[*]Education Level[*]Will Power[/list:u]It struck me that there were a few things that could be attributes that had not been covered, but fourteen was already a solid list; it also had a certain balance, since I could see that there were seven physical and seven non-physical attributes. Although some of these did not appear necessarily to be attributes in the traditional sense, they were used as attributes in play, and so needed to be there. Multiverser is designed to facilitate converting any real or imagined person, character, or creature into game stats, and to simulate quite a large chunk of unlimited different realities, so it needed a lot of mechanics on which to build that.

For what it does, it may well have the ultimate list of attributes.

On the other hand, Legends of Alyria has three: Force, Insight, and Determination.

Force is not strength; you can be a ninety-eight pound weakling and have an incredible level of force, if that's the kind of person you are. There was a business teacher in my high school who was all of about four foot eight who was such a fierce individual that the worst hoodlums in the school were afraid of her. You could, on the other hand, be able to lift a car with one hand and not have a significant force, if you're really the sort of cowardly lion who wouldn't hurt a fly or insist on your own way in a confrontation. Strength is irrelevant; force is what matters.

Similarly, insight does not mean you're necessarily brilliant--you might be, or you might just be very good at understanding what's going on. Determination might be the equivalent of will power, but it covers a lot more.

Legends of Alyria doesn't need any more attributes than that. A strength score would actually be counterproductive to the game's objectives; a dexterity score would be more so. There is no attribute you could add that would make the game system more effective at what it does.

Ultimate lists of attributes really aren't much use, because they are only ultimate within the context of the game system objectives, and that means you've got to know what you're doing with them before you know which ones you need.

--M. J. Young

Hasn't this been done already for English?

I think some guy named Roget did it a while back, and various heirs of his have kept up as the language has changed.  The book--I forget the title, but it sounds like some kind of dinosaur--is now in its third edition, I believe.

--JB, that lump you see in my cheek is just a large mint

Ok... kind of new to this forum.... so I'll bite....

... J B BELL ...
  Would you be talking about a Thesaurus?
  Did you know that there isn't a synonym for that word, which is kind of funny!
  Where you being facetious;
(fu'seeshus) -
1) Cleverly amusing in tone.
Syn=tongue-in-cheek, bantering.


Still, kind of glad to see no "It's this way, it's the best" statements here!  You have no idea how wonderful that is to see, (or not as the case actually is! LOL).

  So, as a quick question, considering people seem so broad minded , what are peoples reactions to contactable/expandable statistics.  Those that permit you to choose whether you want to play with generalistic stats, such as Body, Mind and Soul, or more detailed, exploded versions of those three, so Body would become Strength and Constitution, those two might then become Muscle & Force, Endurance and Health etc., so you range from 3 Stats through 6. 9, 12, 15 to 21 stats in total ?
  Would people find this useful, enjoyable, having some potential, or just redundant, inane, useless, unneccessary etc?

conceptually thats been done for a long time with skill lists.  Lots of games have gone from packages, down to skills, down to specialties, and even down to sub specialties.  I don't remember any that drilled that deeply on the attribute side, but I don't see a reason why you couldn't do that.

The question would be for me "what's the advantage".

I'd much prefer to have a game where the attributes were chosen by the designer specifically not because they represent a universal list that covers everything but precisely because they make a very specific statement about the nature of the game and or its setting.

For instance, one under-appreciated game here on the Forge is Ron's Mongrel example from the simulationist essay.

In that game one of the attributes is "beauty".  Not as a proxy for charisma or force of personality, or presence or anything of the kind.  Simply because actual physical beauty is important to the culture of the setting.  Its what members of that culture would rate each other on, and therefor its an attribute...regardless of questions of "what skills would you use it with".

Even better, is that the attribute is part of linked pair that must sum to 8.  Which means as one attribute gets higher, the other must get lower.

The other attribute in that pair is Physique.

Whoa, double check, does that say what I think it says?

Yup.  As Physique goes up, Beauty goes down.  As Beauty goes up, Physique goes down.  

In other words, for this culture, for this setting, big mighty muscles are considered profoundly unattractive.  Beauty then must be set by slender, petite, waif-like, elven, effete standards.

Is that a universally applicable truth?  No, but it is a truth for the culture specific to Mongrel and I find that level of setting specific information being embedded directly into a games attributes to be very appealing.