From: jliukkon@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Juha-Matti Liukkonen)
Newsgroups: rec.games.design
Subject: net.rpg: musing on the stat tree
Keywords: net.rpg, stat
Date: 21 Nov 92 00:57:48 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

I've had this impression of the stat discussions that we are trying to
classify too many things as stats. Build is not a good stat, because it
needs to be split into non-stat-like components, but it is nonetheless
an important item in character description. The same applies to the
likes of Social, "Knowledge of Self," and the SupperPowers(tm).

So, instead of splitting and re-arranging stats, how about splitting
_stats_ as a category? I thought about a broader sense description of
the character, which would include mostly textual descriptions of the
character's persona, background, and being (including the IMO necessary
racial/cultural descriptions.) This would 1) give a place where to put
the "non-stat-like stats," 2) perhaps be enough of a character
description for a diceless system variant, and 3) leave the racial
factors only to determine the stat ranges.

This would also introduce another compact level of abstraction:

	Descriptions
	     |
	   Stats
	  /     \
      Skills   Attributes

Here Attributes being the most often varying properties (eg. Hit Points,
Fatigue level, Move rate, whathaveyou.)

Another important fact is that too many stats simply confuse. If the
game mechanics don't require something, even if a Real Life(tm) person
would have it, it probably shouldn't be there - at least categorized as
a stat (ie. a basic property.)

Let's see if I can get a draft together...

A stat is a person's natural prowess or ability in an area of activity;
physical or mental.  Characteristics are more general descriptions of
the person; his appearance, demeanor, abilities, and weaknesses.  Thus,
stats are characteristics as well, when viewed in a broad sense. 

Characteristics

Appearance	- Race, Height, Weight (these + Strength describe Build)
		- Description of Looks (text)
Demeanor	- Racial/cultural prejudices, oddities, ... (text)
		- Overview of the most prominent features (text)
Abilities	- Overview of Strong Abilities (= good Stats, text)
		- Special Powers (text + numbers?)
Weaknesses	- Overview of Weak Abilities (= low Stats, text)
		- Special Weaknesses and Quirks (text + numbers?)

Stats

Physical	- Strength
			+ Static
			+ Movement
		- Agility
			+ Dexterity (manual)
			+ Quickness
		- Constitution
			+ Health
			+ Endurance
Mental		- Reasoning
			+ Logical
			+ Memory
		- Esoteric
			+ Aesthetic
			+ Channels
		- Awareness
			+ Alertness
			+ Intuition

What the Heck do these Stats Mean, then?

Strength: The muscular power of the person. The bigger the Strength,
	bigger the objects (s)he can wield and carry about, and longer
	the distances (s)he can move without exhaustion.
	Static: The muscular power, and control over it, one uses to
		lift, throw and carry things. Short-term power well.
	Movement: The muscular power, and control over it, one uses to
		move fast and/or for long distances without exhaustion.
Agility: The fine-tuned muscular control over one's body. Great Agility
	allows one to do perfectly timed and controlled movements with
	great balance and precision.
	Dexterity: The manual nimbleness one uses to execute precision
		movements.
	Quickness: The speed of one's movements; the speed with which
		a person can get his/her body to act.
Constitution: The basic health, fitness, and integrity of one's body.
	Good constitution helps in resisting disease, recovery from
	injuries, and to withstand physical exertion.
	Health: The strength of one's internal bodily functions, and
		the natural disease resistance and healing forces.
	Endurance: The basic fitness of one's body; the amount of
		physical exertion one can take before exhaustion.
Reasoning: The speed and accuracy of one's logical thought processes.
	Good reasoning ability allows one to quickly deduct things,
	recall memories, and to interpret the surrounding environment
	and events in it.
	Logic: The speed and accuracy of the logical deduction powers
		of one's mind.
	Memory: The speed and accuracy of one's memorizing and memory
		recalling abilities.
Esoteric: The powerfulness and control of the non-conscious thought
	processes induced in one's mind. Good esoteric ability gives
	one a clear image and some control over one's non-conscious
	thoughts and images.
	Aesthetic: One's talent to produce aesthetically pleasing
		images, of either substantial or non-substantial
		form.
	Channels: One's talent to consciously direct the non-conscious
		thoughts to a specific direction, and to get clear
		visions of their meanings.
Awareness: The sharpness and accuracy of the subconscious registering
	of one's environment, and the talent to non-consciously draw
	conclusions from them. Good awareness allows one to get a good
	understanding of one's surroundings with a mere glance.
	Alertness: The talent to subconsciously register even the
		slightest movements, shades of light, and noises, and
		to alert the conscious mind of these, if need be.
	Intuition: The talent to subconsciously draw conclusions
		of known, but perhaps not yet consciously realized
		facts, hints, and other bits of information.

Hmm. Not perfect, but I kind of like the equal distribution (each stat
having the same amount of substats.) I still think that each higher
level (higher abstraction/lower detail) stat should be the average of
its substats, and equal distribution makes this easy to do (note that
not all of us are mathematically oriented, me included) and comprehend
by at least looking sort of balanced. Though it might not model the Real
World(tm) too well. OTOH, I'm beginning to realize that we might simply
have to make some compromises in modeling the reality for the mechanics'
sake... One of these compromises is clear: in order to make a simple
stat scenario, there shouldn't be any intra-stat relations. Or as few as
possible, anyway.

Well, anyways.  Someone said that the lower (abstraction) level stats
could be cheaper, and I agree on this.  The averaging would balance the
lower costs (and hence bigger advancements) on the way to the top.  In
an experience system perhaps only the lowest level stats would grow, and
the higher level ones would inherit the changes.  This would mean that
the experience gained would need to be scaled according to the
appropriate abstraction level. Lowest level, advancement x1, second
x10, third x100 the listed value required to advance, perhaps. Or some
other simple mechanic.

Of this set, we could use either just Characteristics, or Char+Phys+
Ment, or Char+Str+Agi+Con+Rea+Eso+Awa, or Char+the_lowest_level_ones, or
a mixture of these, as proposed earlier.  I think we shouldn't try to
define much more specialized stats, but rather implement them as
separate skills. (Too deep a stat tree would just confuse: a person's
short term memory can only hold about 7..10 items at a time.)

When continuing the Stat tree to skill tree, we'd also need to decide on
a level of abstraction used when picking the skills. As dalamb told of
his experiences with a skill tree, too deep a tree will be *trouble*
when the experience starts to bubble upward...

* * * * *

And about the racial skill factors I mentioned earlier: with this I
meant the method RuneQuest uses to determine the base skills.  Each
skill has a base, depending on the race of the character - this base
represents sort of the childhood experience gained among the specific
culture.  You over there in US and various other countries might not
have very different skills than me, but let's take any Arfican guy of
our age: I'd bet he has different skills to start with.  I know, I live
with two Nigerians.  Now this might be handled with the career path
method, but that would require all careers to have specific paths for
*each* culture. The other option that comes to mind would be to define
the base skills with each race/culture description for the skills whose
base values deviate from the standard base.

I like the cultural base skill concept, because it gives some feel of
the direction the people of this culture are growing up to.  And while
doing that it tends to automatically handle the "career path" for the
early childhood (roughly, but that's better than none) - our skills do
develop before the age of 15, don't they? And do we want to make the
career paths for children, too...  ("Ok, from the age of 3 to 5 you
liked to play football a lot, so that would mean you were of the 'sports
kid' career then...  Fix the skill advancements by your maturity rate,
'cause you don't advance as much as a kid than an adult, you know.")

The career path could be made to handle this rather elegantly, but I
like the simplicity of this approach.

* * * * *

Now it's time for YOU to make your own draft, if you already haven't
done so.  Then we'll stuff all of them in a cauldron, mix, add some
spices, and cook up the final, perfect solution...  :)

But seriously, the "real life approach" should not be used to introduce
unnecessary elements to the game.  I recently tried a *very* real life
solution, and had to make serious compromises to make the system work at
all. And as the project depended on the realism, it was a complete flop.

P.S. !!! NOTE !!! The "Paranormal Investigations" in my .sig was a joke
(well, it's an everyday saying in our dept. of Computer Science...) I'm
sorry if anyone's taken serious pains over the subject.
-- 
               Juha Liukkonen, aka jliukkon@cc.helsinki.fi
            University of Helsinki, Dept. of Monkey Business
                                 --O--
           "Trust me, I know what I'm doing." - Sledge Hammer