Hello, I'm trying to develop a Purist for System type game to fit many different sorts of settings, with the intent of the rules being designed to be highly customizable.  I'm calling it "QADST" for now.  This stands for Qualities, Attributes, Disciplines, Styles and Techniques.  These are the primary components that make up a Persona in the game.  I say "Persona" and not "Character", because I think that the use of "Character" in modern English, at least in the way that it is used in the context of games, carries with it baggage from its use in narrative fiction.  Seeing as how I identify with Simulationism more than the other CAs, and how I don't want to create a system that seeks to emulate other media, I chose to go with a less-used synonym.
  Of those five components, I'm mainly going to go into Qualities and Attributes in this post, leaving the rest (which are essentially skills) for later.  Qualities are the analog of D&D's Abilities or what GURPS and Storyteller call Attributes (yes the departure from common terminology might make this confusing.  I'm currently unsure of the total amount that I want, but the ones I'm thinking of currently are Might, Movement, Dexterity, Body, Health, Intellect, Reaction, Disposition, Will, Resources, Reputation, and Social.  Yes, that's a lot.  Each Quality has three ratings, I'm not sure of what scale I want yet.  The ratings are for three different time-frames:  Permanent, Temporary, and Ephemeral.  The Permanent rating is what most systems use:  it changes very rarely.  Temporary ratings tend to change over the course of a session or two.  Ephemeral ratings can change erratically within a scene.  Changes in the larger scaled ratings effect the smaller scaled ones but not vice-versa.
  For each of those time-frames, a Persona has a set of Traits.  The Traits associated with the Permanent time-frame are called Attributes.  Attributes include what most people are familiar with in regard to Traits (descriptors of physical and psychological features) but also includes non-consumable equipment.  Temporary Traits are things like illnesses, injuries, magical effects and ammunition.  Ephemeral Traits are things like status abnormalities, tactical advantages, and magical fuel.
  Traits can be gained or lost outside of conflict, but are much more common in it.  If two Personae are in conflict with each other, they make opposing skill checks.  In this system a skill check involves rolling a dice-pool of d12s and adding modifiers.  None of the modifiers come from Qualities but some will come from traits.  The dice-pool is rolled and a set number of the highest dice are kept that depends solely on the power level of the game and the Persona.  In a game in which Personae are capable of only real-world human levels of achievement, only one die is kept, and its number is added to the modifiers.  Also, if (in a standard power level setting/persona) the number of 1s, 2s, or 3s is equal to or greater than the Quality rating associated with the roll, it results in a critical auto-fail. 
  Back to Conflicts.  When two opposing skill checks are rolled.  If the attacker rolls higher, he wins.  Subtract the defender's score from the attacker's.  The smaller the difference, the more control the defender has on the outcome, and the greater the difference, the more control the attacker has.  Basically, the defender gets to choose appropriate positive traits to lose, or negative traits to gain, and the Attacker gets to try to restrict what's considered appropriate, negate the defender's choices, or add choices of his own.  Then traits are randomly chosen from those to be applied, and the Traits chosen affect the Quality ratings.

Two problems with all of this come to mind:  1)  I've long been of the opinion that it's high time that game designers start taking advantage of modern technology for the game design.  I'm not suggesting making RPGs more like video games, replacing the SIS and restricting creativity.  What I'm suggesting is that computer technology allow designers to make complex games that are simple to play through assistance in record-keeping, calculations and rules referencing.  I've always intended this game to do this.  2)  The Traits system really feels like a card mechanic would work best.  How could I get that to mesh with point #1?

Any thoughts or feedback?

Thanks,
Eric Schwenke

Hi Eric,

Sounds interesting.  I'm just curious about what you envisioned for your software?  For the most part, it seems like you'll want a database of some sort to keep track of everything, which (although I'm no programmer) I suspect is easy enough to do.  You'll just have to think carefully about your interface design.

But depending on what you're after, this could be a bottleneck.  If you want things really streamlined, then the players will need to be limited in terms of what they must access of the underlying system, and so you'll be designing at two levels (complex underlying system and simplified user interface).  I think the reason more designers don't do this, besides it being a lot more work, is that if you're going to need a simplified version of the game as an interface, why not just use that version for everything and fill in the rest in play?

On the other hand, if you're going for a lot of well-defined detail in play (which it sounds like you are), then you'll want to keep a relatively complex system, and give players unfettered access to it that complexity.  But if that's the case, computerizing things may not actually streamline play very much (though it may help a great deal with record-keeping).

That's just my take on it though.  I'll admit I have a definite bias towards simplification.

It's certainly worth trying, if you've got the time & inclination.

In my opinion, simplification detracts from immersion - sans the software, complex rules, efficiently made (i.e. as little processes to achieve the desired effect as possible), makes the best gameworld, irrespective of the GNS trichotomy.

With the software, I say make it as fucking complex as possible.  Why stop with around 10 attributes?  Why not 20?!  Imagine the kind of verisimilitude you can pull off with such fine-tuned machinery.  Could you imagine someone's persona shooting someone, and the program determines the bullet hits their aorta, or striking someone with an axe kick to find out they crushed the other guy's collar bone?  How about characters that automatically progress based upon their play style?  I just came.  Fuck, I need a cigarette.

Heheh, awesome!  although I'm not sure I needed that final image :/

The problem is, determining really specific injuries on the fly requires a LOT of physics modelling, in which case, you're looking at something very complex, and which would require a whole team of programmers and 3D artists.  Even Triple-A video game titles aren't so exacting, because that sort of thing is incredibly labour intensive (and resource intensive--it'd be hard to run that on your average system with all the fully detailed models & such).

Then again, you could fake it with RPG-style critical hit tables, which could even have animations of specific injuries (maybe even complete with CSI-style graphics showing the bullet passing through a 3D rendered aorta...).  That actually wouldn't be very difficult at all, but it might get repetitive.  Also, it might be a pain to come up with a dozen or more specific injuries for each type of attack (and for the user to enter the specific attack type, weapon, target & hit location).

Anyway, Eric, if this is where you're headed, you might want to look at video game techniques as well as pen & paper design techniques.  I haven't been on Gamasutra.com or GameDev.net in a while, but they both have (or had) large databases of video game design articles.  Finding actual design documents to look at might be more difficult (or it used to be, I haven't looked for any in a while).  Anyway, if you're interested, I can also email you some empty design doc templates to look at.