Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Characters - Primary Stats

Section8

Cipher
Joined
Oct 23, 2002
Messages
4,321
Location
Wardenclyffe
So let's start with the most basic element of the character system, the primary stats. Nothing groundbreaking here, it's all more or less familiar territory for anyone who has ever played an RPG, but I'm curious to hear people's thoughts on the method of character creation (see right down the bottom).

Overview

Synaesthesia defines characters at high level by their Primary Stats. They number ten, but are logically arranged as pairs - Brawn (Strength/Speed), Brains (Intellect/Ingenuity), Finesse (Perception/Proficiency), Charm (Charisma/Countenance), and Mettle (Fortitude/Fate). These are the broad brush strokes that are used to initially sketch out a character archetype, and are traded off against one another in character creation] with a weighting system.

Brawn
Brawn is what defines what a character is capable of through physical exertion, and is represented along two axes, one governing the degree of actions, the other the rate of actions.

* Strength - Strength defines the universal physical power of a character. It governs the character's ability to succeed at tasks requiring brute force, such as melee combat, heavy lifting or prying open a door.
* Speed - Speed defines how quickly actions can be undertaken. It governs the rate of actions and how fast a character can move.

Brains
Brains are what define a the mind of a character and like Brawn, are represented along two axes, one governing the degree of actions, the other the rate of actions.

* Intellect - Intellect defines the depth of thought, the power of the mind. It governs the character's capacity for complex and mentally challenging tasks, such as developing and modifying items, surgical procedures or <s>torturing</s> researching captive enemies.
* Ingenuity - Ingenuity defines the agility of the mind, the speed of thought. It governs the character's reaction times, timely resolution of mental tasks and capacity for wit.

Finesse
Finesse is a measure of how artful the character is, and their capability for taking a skillful approach to tasks. The two axes of Finesse serve a related purpose, though not in the same amplitude/frequency model as Brains and Brawn.

* Perception - Perception defines the keenness of senses. It governs the character's ability to notice details and the degree to which they can utilise/exploit them.
* Proficiency - Proficiency defines higher skills and coordination. It governs the character's aptitude toward tasks involving skillful physical manipulation, such as picking a lock, moving quietly and unseen or attacking a vital organ.

Charm
Charm defines a character's social grace, and their influence of intelligent beings. It is represented along two axes, again related but not as discretely modelled as Brains and Brawn.

* Charisma - Charisma is the magnetism of personality. It governs the character's ability to consciously influence their peers, predominantly through dialogue.
* Countenance - Countenance defines the outward appearance. It governs the character's ability to unconsciously influence their peers, and modifies reactions to social endeavours.

Mettle
Mettle is the ability to survive and resist harm. The two axes Mettle is plotted upon exemplify related but opposed ways to avoid personal harm.

* Fortitude - Fortitude is the universal toughness of a character. It governs the ability to withstand direct harm, and resist negative effects.
* Fate - Fate controls the chaotic elements of destiny. It governs outcomes across the board, and in extreme cases can defy logic.

______

During character creation, the player weights the importance of each stat (effectively on a scale of 1 to 10). Equal weighting across the board will result in 10 equal stats, regardless of how high the precedence is - 10 marked "most important" will be exactly the same as 10 marked "least important".

Otherwise, a character is created from the "sketch" the player has made. As the player works out their preference, the five stat pairings are displayed as sine waves so the player can see the results of the interactive weightings, as well as a textual description highlighting their highs, lows, and things they're likely to be good at - sort of like an inner guidance counselor.

On the plus side of it, it's fairly simple manipulation for an insane number of permutations, and it's pretty trivial to nut out various archetypes. Preset character builds are dead simple too. However, even though the idea is to move away from stat crunching, there's still potential for players to dick around endlessly with various combinations if they really want to.

So what do people think? Is it too simple? Unintuitive? Just plain irritating that you can't tweak those values accurately?
 

galsiah

Erudite
Joined
Dec 12, 2005
Messages
1,613
Location
Montreal
I think the character creation is fine - good even. Arguably it's the standard means of stat-picking that's the more indirect, since the player will first decide on relative importance, then convert those decisions into stat choices. This could be seen as cutting out the middleman.
I like the idea of text descriptions too. Would those discrete descriptions reflect particular underlying stat levels, or stat ranges?? - i.e. does [description X] give the player perfect information on his ability in that area, or a vague idea?

From a hard-nosed powergamer point of view, whether imprecision is annoying will probably depend on the use of stats in game. If there are points where a 7.3 gives a radically different outcome from a 7.4, the player will at least potentially have reason to dislike his lack of precision (even if he isn't shown the numbers). If outcomes usually vary fairly smoothly with small changes in ability, there's little reason to care about that precision. I guess that it's almost inevitable for some branches in the game to go very differently based on a difference in ability scores though.

Presumably the aim is to get the player interested in, and entertained by, the narrative - regardless of the path taken, or the degree of player control over that path. So long as that's the case, imprecision shouldn't be a problem.
If the player starts out by thinking "I'm aiming for game results X, Y and Z", it might be - but I guess that's a mindset you'd be discouraging(??).
 

eth

Novice
Joined
Nov 20, 2007
Messages
84
Well before you read my comment i think i should warn you that i have a "weird" opinion about stats in RPGs in general. I am not a fan of them at all, i like combat but not stats. There are too much cases of cRPGs that have "favorable" stats. If you search the codex a bit you 'll see that its full of advices how to play one game or another like:
"No don't play with a strength character, wisdom is much better"
"Be sure to make a high AP character or you 'll suck"
"Charisma is useless on this game don't bother"
etc
Many of these advices are overreactions but the other half is not. In many games the stats fall into categories like "favorable", "decent", "hardly worth it" and "almost unimplemented". What i understand from this situation is that most cRPG developers start their game design like you try to do here: "I 'll make a cRPG, what stats i should include?". Can i propose something? Do it the other way around. Design the combat first, any other minigames/puzzles you might add, think about the dialogs, the whole world and the character/party interaction with it. Will the game forcus on one or more of these or all of them equally?
If you focus on combat and the dialogue only serves as a mean to keep you on track with the story what a "charisma" stat is doing there at the character creation screen?
If your combat consists of guns and spells why bother with a "strength" stat?

What i see on this kind of approach is that there are less chances of ending up with attributes/skills that are in the category "unimplemented" or "hardly worth it". I 'll stop here, maybe i 'll add more thoughts later on this thread. Don't really know if it will work (i mean designing the other way around) - never made a game myself or something. I just hope i contributed something with my opinion instead of messing you.
 

Alex

Arcane
Joined
Jun 14, 2007
Messages
8,750
Location
São Paulo - Brasil
eth said:
(...snip)There are too much cases of cRPGs that have "favorable" stats. If you search the codex a bit you 'll see that its full of advices how to play one game or another like:
"No don't play with a strength character, wisdom is much better"
"Be sure to make a high AP character or you 'll suck"
"Charisma is useless on this game don't bother"
etc
Many of these advices are overreactions but the other half is not. In many games the stats fall into categories like "favorable", "decent", "hardly worth it" and "almost unimplemented". What i understand from this situation is that most cRPG developers start their game design like you try to do here: "I 'll make a cRPG, what stats i should include?". Can i propose something? Do it the other way around. Design the combat first, any other minigames/puzzles you might add, think about the dialogs, the whole world and the character/party interaction with it. Will the game forcus on one or more of these or all of them equally?
If you focus on combat and the dialogue only serves as a mean to keep you on track with the story what a "charisma" stat is doing there at the character creation screen?
If your combat consists of guns and spells why bother with a "strength" stat?
(snip...)

I agree with eth, at least about the part of avoiding useless stats. I think that you should really aim for stats that have an equal amount of "show time". They don't need to be equally useful, but they should be equally fun. For example Luck in fallout wasn't that useful (aside from those endgame perks), but it had some nice effects.

A luck 10 character that comes to the raider camp near shady sands may be mistaken for the dead father of the raider's leaders. There were other circumstances were luck was useful, and although the game probably could use a few more places were it was useful, I think it shows very well how stats can be useful in different manners.

About how to make certain your stats are balanced, I don't know for sure what is the best way. eth suggests designing the other way around, and I agree it is important to know what you want each stat for. However, I think your best bet would probably make a cycle of designing. Design a bit on what each status do, then look at the status. If any of them aren't very useful, change their functionality, or merge it with another, or simply take it away, then go back to the rules. Keep doing this until you are happy with the result.

Of course, if your stats are used outside of battle (like luck in fallout), you probably will need to do the same with the level design, although it may be impossible to change the stats after a certain point. Then you will need to make sure level design takes into account all the status in the game.
 

TheLostOne

Savant
Joined
Sep 5, 2007
Messages
770
Location
Limbo
I disagree with cardtrick because your game model sounds like the perfect place to get away from stats being min/max excercises for optimising combat efficiency.

You've got a survival horror game that's focus is on dynamic character and world interactions. Within that scope there are tons of cool things you can do with stats. If you're only thinking about combat then sure why have strength when you've got guns, but I can think of dozens of reasons you'd want stength in a survival game outside of combat. The ability to move heavy objects, block doors, break pipes, etc could come in fucking handy.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like there will be a lot of adventure gaming elements in this game. Since your character is not static in terms of ability, and you're creating a dynamic gameworld this sounds like it could be pretty challenging, because you're going to have to design every puzzle/roadblock/obstacle with some sort of solution for every character build. I can see using the npcs as a crutch with this to help a character out with areas that aren't the PC's main strength, but that could possibly trivialize things. The events should have some solutions which are more positive than others. Also, I hope you're conisidering the npcs expendable. It'd be neat that if the player relies on their help too much, or asks the wrong person to help with the wrong task that could cause their death.

That's the biggest potential problem that I see with the variety you want in a dynamic environment. Balancing consequence/reward and keeping the game playable with any build.

A thought on the issue of rewarding more difficult or well thought out solutions to game problems. This could partially be addressed for major events with having a broad spectrum of endings. If you always take the easy/obvious solutions or make poor choices, when the game resolves you could have a pretty shitty depressing ending (fitting for survival horror genre anyway.) Maybe have one or two best endings that are absolutely difficult to obtain. You could do this with event checks, or with a scoring system (hidden or non-numerical preferably).

Edit: Instead of just having better endings, also if you're game is kind of a mystery and the characters are trying to figure things out, maybe better choices could lead to more information about why things turned out the way they did and who, if anyone, is behind it. This could be tied to the ending system as an alternative to the points thing. You get different endings depending on how much story you've uncovered in your playthrough.

You have a target play length? If you're working on aiming for a dynamic world with many permutations it should be fairly short to encourage replays to explore other avenues.

Anyway, love the design concept. Would like to see watch and see how this one develops.
 

Section8

Cipher
Joined
Oct 23, 2002
Messages
4,321
Location
Wardenclyffe
galsiah said:
I think the character creation is fine - good even. Arguably it's the standard means of stat-picking that's the more indirect, since the player will first decide on relative importance, then convert those decisions into stat choices. This could be seen as cutting out the middleman.

That's a good way of rationalising it.

I like the idea of text descriptions too. Would those discrete descriptions reflect particular underlying stat levels, or stat ranges?? - i.e. does [description X] give the player perfect information on his ability in that area, or a vague idea?

It'll be an extension of the relativity between the stats and the mean more than an absolute measure, the same system, with varying degrees of accuracy/data applies to the player character observing an NPC. Rather than quantifying, you're identifying:

Barry is all about pure strength, and it shows. He's also pretty quick, making him a formidable brawler. You'd probably say he's handsome, but a bit lacking in personality. And he's just not bright. At all. He's neither quick-witted nor prone to deep philosophical thought, so you wouldn't really want to see him trying to operate anything more perplexing than a screwdriver.

Obviously there's a lot of work going into the function that generates that chunk of text, and a whole lot of writing for enough variation to make it worthwhile, but the same functions and words/phrases are going to be driving critical features like dialogue.

From a hard-nosed powergamer point of view, whether imprecision is annoying will probably depend on the use of stats in game. If there are points where a 7.3 gives a radically different outcome from a 7.4, the player will at least potentially have reason to dislike his lack of precision (even if he isn't shown the numbers). If outcomes usually vary fairly smoothly with small changes in ability, there's little reason to care about that precision. I guess that it's almost inevitable for some branches in the game to go very differently based on a difference in ability scores though.

The aim is to not have too many absolute cut-offs on stat checks, so it would be very rare to have something agonisingly close like that. If it did happen, it's not transparent to the player, so they need never know. The worst thing I see happening is a player who considers their character to be exceptionally strong to repeatedly fail at strength-related tasks.

Also to be kept in consideration is that you're part of a small community of people with varied skill sets. If you can't charge down that door, maybe you can get someone else to pick the lock for you - but unlike D&D where you have a party that works like a swiss army knife, the idea is to get rid of that convenient unity of purpose.

Presumably the aim is to get the player interested in, and entertained by, the narrative - regardless of the path taken, or the degree of player control over that path. So long as that's the case, imprecision shouldn't be a problem.
If the player starts out by thinking "I'm aiming for game results X, Y and Z", it might be - but I guess that's a mindset you'd be discouraging(??).

Yeah the general idea is to dismiss any notions of permanent failure. If you can't get that door open, then there should be something just as compelling going on elsewhere, and maybe you can come back when you're better at breaking down doors, better equipped to do so, or have enlisted help. Hopefully, there will be some form of dynamic snowball effect to whatever happens.

What i see on this kind of approach is that there are less chances of ending up with attributes/skills that are in the category "unimplemented" or "hardly worth it". I 'll stop here, maybe i 'll add more thoughts later on this thread. Don't really know if it will work (i mean designing the other way around) - never made a game myself or something. I just hope i contributed something with my opinion instead of messing you.

Yep, that makes a lot of sense, just bear in mind that I'm showing off bits of design documentation that already exist though, and not writing here on the fly. The only stat pairing that doesn't really have any directly associated gameplay attached is Mettle which is mostly passive in nature. There's still potential for player to min/max toward a certain type of gameplay, but hopefully I can provide enough incentive to have a broader, more balanced player character.

About how to make certain your stats are balanced, I don't know for sure what is the best way. eth suggests designing the other way around, and I agree it is important to know what you want each stat for. However, I think your best bet would probably make a cycle of designing. Design a bit on what each status do, then look at the status. If any of them aren't very useful, change their functionality, or merge it with another, or simply take it away, then go back to the rules. Keep doing this until you are happy with the result.

That's pretty sound advice as well, and I've been doing what I can to evolve my initial designs. Along with that comes getting input from outside sources, which is why I'm gradually going to be throwing bits out there to discuss with you guys. The ideal I'm shooting for at the moment is that all characters should have an enjoyable outlet for their strongest points, and that a reasonable balance between stats gives more opportunities. When I get around to talking about skills, this should become clearer.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like there will be a lot of adventure gaming elements in this game. Since your character is not static in terms of ability, and you're creating a dynamic gameworld this sounds like it could be pretty challenging, because you're going to have to design every puzzle/roadblock/obstacle with some sort of solution for every character build.

Not quite. There will be varied solutions according to character build, but not reliably so. The idea is more to provide a world "busy" enough that a single roadblock ought to simply divert the player to other things. Gothic 2 is a good example, where at any given time you have a journal full of stuff you're just not capable of (yet).

I can see using the npcs as a crutch with this to help a character out with areas that aren't the PC's main strength, but that could possibly trivialize things. The events should have some solutions which are more positive than others. Also, I hope you're conisidering the npcs expendable. It'd be neat that if the player relies on their help too much, or asks the wrong person to help with the wrong task that could cause their death.

Yep, I want to be really diligent on avoiding the "swiss army knife" of a D&D party. For the most part, the Community will be collaborative, but not in the sense of a well-drilled unit of half-a-dozen like-minded individuals functioning with a unity of purpose. Time is very precious, and NPCs require motive to favour your request over what they're already doing, which would sensibly be what they consider most important. Obviously, a charming sort will have an easier time getting their way, but they're going to need it since weighting in favour of charm takes points away from somewhere else. That sort of thing.

As for NPC mortality, I give you a big yes. It's pretty crucial to a game focuses on survival. It's not going to be taken lightly though, given the very limited supply of NPCs. But yes, I'd expect you'd run into situations where you'll very much regret having convinced that frail little egghead doctor to join you on a combat "mission" as a field medic. ;)

A thought on the issue of rewarding more difficult or well thought out solutions to game problems. [snip] You get different endings depending on how much story you've uncovered in your playthrough.

Ultimately, I'm not really aiming toward traditional reward systems, where clever/more difficult solutions mean more XP, more cash and so forth. The aim is to have the rewards come in a couple of different forms - first of all a natural gameworld reward. If you synthesised a poison and put it in the water supply to kill off the mutants, then you've risked less by avoiding direct combat, you're not using combat resources/munitions, you're not spending time healing wounds, and you're not causing collateral damage. Secondly, there should be a form of narrative reward. I can't hope to cover every solution to everything, but ideally the game should recognise as many solutions as possible and trigger conversations, plot arcs and so forth to give the player/character that warm fuzzy feeling of being recognised for supreme cleverness.

You have a target play length? If you're working on aiming for a dynamic world with many permutations it should be fairly short to encourage replays to explore other avenues.

I haven't really pulled out a magic number, but yes, I'd expect something fairly short and sweet. It depends on how well we can get the dynamics to gel.
 

cardtrick

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 26, 2007
Messages
1,456
Location
Maine
TheLostOne said:
I disagree with cardtrick because your game model sounds like the perfect place to get away from stats being min/max excercises for optimising combat efficiency.

Now, I understand you may just be in the habit of this from the Iron Tower forums. But I'm still a little impressed that you can disagree with me before I've posted in the thread. ;)

Anyway, on topic. I love the character creation system taken alone. The stats are very interesting (ingenuity and fate are my favorites), even though I'm having some trouble imagining how you're going to implement them all in the game. I like the idea of choosing relative priorities, rather than absolute values. It feels somehow familiar, but I'm having trouble remembering when I've used something similar -- maybe some kind of personality test, or an internet radio station? Anyway, galsiah's "middleman" comment is, as usual, right on the money.
 

TheLostOne

Savant
Joined
Sep 5, 2007
Messages
770
Location
Limbo
cardtrick said:
TheLostOne said:
I disagree with cardtrick because your game model sounds like the perfect place to get away from stats being min/max excercises for optimising combat efficiency.

Now, I understand you may just be in the habit of this from the Iron Tower forums. But I'm still a little impressed that you can disagree with me before I've posted in the thread. ;)

Hehe, whoops.

Well.. er... I knew whatever you had to say about it, I'd disagree! Lol.

Don't know why I thought that first response was yours. Must be habit like you said.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom