This Manifesto thing is turning up some incredible questions: Should mental aptitude be quantified in games? We''ve usually had attributes such as Intelligence, Willpower, Smarts, etc. in CRPGs. But since the debate still rages in reality about the quantifiability of these things, can we really justify having them in games? This also applies to table-top systems, which I have also designed. There are two arguements FOR Mental Attributes: Magic and PLayer-character distinction. Magic is generally portrayed as a mental action (which is why i am thoroughly chagrined at the D&D style insistance on physical gestures which "restrict the use of armor or certain weapons", an obvious attempt at power balance which I consider a huge failure.) So a mental attribute is often required to determine spell effectiveness. This is less needed in open-ended systems or puzzle based systems, or any other "alternative Magic systems". (See Magic Alternatives post in this Forum) Player-character distinction is when one is smarter than the other. Sometimes the character is super-genius, so the platyer can rely on it''s intelligence in situations where she doesn''t know the answer. But this is almost NEVER the case in games, so why do we still use mental attributes? It is my personal belief that you cannot measure Intelligence, only quantify acquired knowledge. A human being''s ability to learn is only limited by their own motivation, and is technically limitless. This is even the case with the mentally handicapped. So where do we get off giving it a number, in both reality and games? (IMHO IMHO IMHO) Let ''er rip! This post was brought to you by the letter "Land", and the number "Fish!"

I believe a hero''s intelligence should reflect the player''s intelligence.Mental attributes are as stupid as health counters.

I think games must use the "user''s" intelligence and rely on his abilities only.I mean there must be tricky tasks that rely on the player''s ability to complete them.

And i''ve never understood where a hero''s intelligance is aplicable.I mean in most games the hero depends solely on his strength ,his special abilities(picking locks,for example),his stamina,his dexterity,etc.
I haven''t seen a game where the hero had to be a genious!

I''m not talking about magic cause i think enough has been said already in Magic Alternatives.
Voodoo4

I beleive that the need for wisdom/intelligence is only due to lack of any other way to quantify magic, and having them for any other purpose kind of removes the role in role playing games.

Honestly bro.. you''re taking it a little far The things you must remember are that we ARE trying to quantify that which is not quantifiable! By making a game of life.. you''re making something finite from something infinite!

So think about it like this: You as a person have got a few things going for you. You''ve got some sort of common sense, and learned knowledge. You''ve also got your physical strength, and your stamina. You''ve got looks and health. And let''s not forget the fact that you have manual dexterity. These are all things about you that can be measured. Pure physical strength can easily be measured as can stamina. Common sense is fairly easy to measure but hard to quantify. Learned knowledge is pretty easy to determine. They''re all factors which we can measure. They''ve just been done incorrectly

First off, strength is a measure of force. How much force can you achieve?
Stamina is how long you can do something for.
Wisdom, a measure of common sense.. most often misrepresented in a game. Wisdom, along with intelligence, in popular games has been misrepresented. I will clear these up below.
Intelligence, a measure of learned knowledge.
Dexterity is how flexible you are, for the most part. Dexterity in a game has also been misrepresented. See below
Constitution: how healthy you are. This is pretty basic.. but could use some updating and reworking.
Charisma is just that.. how charismatic you are. Most games lump looks into this category.

Now, the wisdom and intelligence things. In DragonRealms, wisdom and intelligence controlled your ability to learn skills and at what rate you did so. They added a third skill: discapline. The model they used was that of a funnel. A funnel''s size and shape determines its flow. It has a spout at the bottom which is X in diameter. It has a pool/resivior which can hold Y ammount. And lastly, it fills at Z rate. A good model has a lot of in, out, and pool. However.. in the game, they had this screwed up. It had a multiplier factor based on level. If you had lots of in and out and pool.. you learned nothing. When a lower level character, you could suck up huge exp for killing something. This goes into your pool, which slowly drains into useable skill. Basically, it was like this: You whacked a monster with a sword. How much you learned for that is Z, rate of fill. As you whacked mutliple times, you eventually had a full pool.. basically, you couldn''t retain any more understanding of why the weapon was working better or worse with each stroke. So you sit and you think, reflecting over what had happened. He dodged left when i sliced like this and countered this way, so i should look for this kind of movement and counter it like that. Now, by considering these options, you turn the "pool" into useful knowledge, or skill. This is the drain rate, X. Now, at low levels, learning a lot per hit and draining a lot fast was good, because you learned a LOT at a time, and a big pool meant you could do a lot of fighting, sit for a while, and learn a lot off of it. However, at high levels, with this multiplier, you ended up learning .01 in the skill, and dropping a lot of pool just to do that. So in essence.. it was better to have a large pool and large fill, but slow drain.
To tie this back together: Intelligence was X, Wisdom Z, and discapline Y. There is much arguement to this, but myself and the best player in the game (he was practically a god) both agreed on this. This seemed a little wrong when we looked up the deffinition of the skills, though.. and that''s why many people had it backwards. Intelligence seems to be that which you learn from doing something, and wisdom is what you make of that something you learned.
Now, i dislike the use of intel and wisdom for this in some ways. Intelligence is book smarts, and wisdom is common sense. I''ve got a lot of wisdom, but low intelligence.. as in i hate learning from a book I learn by example, instead. But i still learn just as fast if not faster than others. So it''s dependant on how the information is presented. To me.. learning from hitting something is done in a much different way. But that''s a big discussion
But yes.. you should have a way to quantify things. Stats are important. But remember.. intelligence as "learned knowledge" doesn''t work if you have skills. It becomes a moot point, since the sum of all skills you know would technically be your intelligence Very hard to define it all Look at yourself, reflect.. and tell me what you see! Do you see strength (or lack thereof), wisdom, intelligence, constitution? do you see anything?

J

You could still have a score that quantifies in-game knowledge. This would work better in a party-based game, I think. You might want to bring along a Bard with 88% Worldliness (or whatever ) so they can identify more objects, creatures, give directions to the nearest inn when you enter a new city, etc.

However, in a single-player game, I''d prefer world knowledge applicable to your character to be presented in the game''s manual or something upfront.

Unless you can make a TRUE virtual reality.. the player can''t do all the things nessicary for the character to operate. True.. the character doesn''t NEED intelligence.. but get real.

In AD&D, if a character had "ancient history" and they happened upon some crypt.. they could make a check to see if their "character" knew what the tomb was. If they passed it, they could recieve information regarding it. The check was dependant on the player''s intelligence or wisdom score, modified. If this system were not in place, the players would never know what the crypt is, unless they''ve immensely studied the realm the DM plays in. This is what''s called a problem. The character, being of that time and place, will know things the player does not. If you deny the player this check to see if the character understands, then you deny the player of any ROLEPLAYING. This goes true for things the player knows that the character shouldn''t. If the DM feels that knowledge a player has is beyond that of the character, they can see fit to make the player ingore that bit of knowledge. That is why it''s roleplaying. What you''re talking about is purely making someone from another time and place be thrown into a situation in which they know NOTHING. that to me is STUPID and poor design. The only game that could ever work for is shooters. The player gets a brief "this is the scenerio" and then is given a list of guns and things they can do, and then they go out and do it. If you try to go beyond game "theme" and into RPG style games, then you MUST provide the player with answers they normally wouldn''t have. True, with a computer.. people usually just have the character say "hey, this is so-and-so". This to me is weak designing as well. D&D used it to see which characters knew what. It made the game much more dynamic and allowed for things to never really happen the same way twice. I''ve never seen a game be able to code the ammount of stuff a DM could come up with. The sheer complexity of things, or the simplest details. All of them are done wrong in computer games. The thing they lack is the fact that sometimes Person A, with higher perception, notices something person B does not. Same goes true with intelligence. If the person has learned something.. then they can use it, but not so otherwise. Even if the player knows this and that to be true, but the character does not.. well then, tough luck
The stats were only there to be derived from. They provide a basis which all things are drawn from. Perhaps your ability to do something is modified by your intelligence. This could be great, seeing as highly intelligent people would have learned more about something and therefore have a greater chance of sucess! This rewards players for actually working on their characters. It provides an interesting model which goes into everything in life. To show: if you and bob both took the same class on art history, and bob has more intelligence than you.. then he''d prolly know more at the end. A lot of factors go into the learning process. Intelligence, wisdom, patience, state of mind, memory! Each one of these can be improved, and thus.. quantifiable!!! If you sit down and study on how to study, you will learn to study better! If you''re learning about weapons and not interested.. you simply know "the pointy end goes that way". That is the reason for classes or professions in a game. It allows the player to say that their character wishes to be innate in this type of skill set. If you don''t have this, then you''ve run in to a big wall! You can''t make all people even in all areas, it''s ridiculous. If you want to do reality, you assign people a random set of innate skills which they''re better at. This way, as people play the character.. they find out what the caracter''s purpose in life is, and so on However, this is not role playing in the classical sense. It''s real role playing. And most people wouldn''t buy it. They want the character to be an extension of them, or to do things they wish they could do. So they have a skill set they want the character to be innate in. You could do a system of "pick your character''s inate skills". I prefer professions in certain situations. Fallout handled the special skills very well. Either way, you have to choose some way to allow the players to customize.
Back to the whole topic though.. stats are very important for doing things. If you don''t have stats, the characters would all be the same. vanilla That''s pretty boring game to me. Even if they can learn different skills. It''d be like a game with stats alone, two-dimensional. two variables makes a three-dimensional array of characters to fall in to. Yet it''s not too complex to create and have people play and enjoy.

As for magic.. magic is an innate ability. Some have it, some don''t. You let the player choose a profession or a magician to say that they want to have that ability. Once they have that ability in them, it''s a matter of stats to how good they are. Note that all games use stats and derived stats. D&D has things like spells per level, chance to learn spell.. etc. Those are all derived. The important thing to remember is that they are affected by the main stat, and they affect other things. Either way, you need to do something about magic other than intel and wisdom. Those are burnt out and useless for the most part. Something else should be introduced to show your ability with magic as a stat, and a skill which shows your profiency with magic.

J

Actually, Darkstone/Diablo both use another stat for magic, it is called ''Magic'' . True that intelligence is good for telling what the RPG character knows, but can''t the story writer for a game have the character find out the information for local/remote places and artifacts from tavern''s, travelers, and scrolls/books?

Whirlwind-
That would be nice if the game would actually sell, but as far as corporate America is concerned they may loose money with that system.
What I would like to see/design/assist (if I had any free time) would be a system that starts all characters (regardless of race) with a set level of attributes. Then depending on how the person plays will determine the other stats... I.E. all characters have some basic magic and low intel and low str with basic fighting skills. As the user plays and kills this will determine what or who they are and in turn will determine their int/Srt/Dex, ect. This way you can have the big Dumb war machine, or the nerdy magician or better yet some hybrid (dual class or multi-class)! There would be no need to classify a character as a fighter or mage till like level 10 when they must choose their path (and would get extra bonuses), or not and get no extra stats.

Just my pennies

"For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen." Douglas Adams

Ok, I can''t help but think of Diablo without the ability cap. Diablo, you pick a base class and you tweak the character''s strength, magic, and dexterity towards what you want your character to be, but you can''t go beyond 75 points in the non-class requisites. For example, my rogue I was playing with recently couldn''t get her strength above 75 unless she used magic items.

Now what you want is a character with 10 INT, STR, DEX, whatever with no max caps so the player can fine tune the PC as he goes along. To assist the player, it would be wise to give about 5-10 points to start the character along the path he wants to have.

Another thing to think about is guilding or some other form for a player to pick up new skills. Each skill has a percent chance of succeeding, and the ammount of that percent increase is based on some of the PC''s attributes. A rock head of a theif would only get a 1% boost in a skill for his training while a craniac theif would max out the level up at 3% (5% probably would be too much, it would cap the player to a LVL 20, while a 3% caps him at around 60, even the best mess up sometimes, all of this will work out during play testing).

I would also go as far as weapon proficiency and species base modifiers. For instance if a theif used a long sword all the time, it would become the weapon he is proficient at, thus all of his to hit modifiers would be applicable to only that weapon, or a percentage of the to hit mods would be. The species deal is where the PC gets good at killing bipeds, so that would factor into damage and to hit modifications.

Actually Niphty, your definitions are off:

INTELLIGENCE can be said to be the speed and efficiency with which we acquire and process information. KNOWLEDGE (or Wisdom, if you will) is the actual retention of facts and processes. These are. not the D&D definitions, but the definitions I have gleaned from the real-world debate on this very topic.

This has several implications... First, for those who claim that the joy of RPGs lies in the "playing of a role" they should see no problem in Whirlwind''s idea of assuming the player and character''s intelligences are one and the same. For thoser (like me) who believe that playing a role has nothing to do with it, you might consider numbers a helpful indicator of the player''s mental aptitude... but there''s a catch.

Using the above definitions, I believe that KNOWLEDGE can be approximately quantified, but INTELLIGENCE most certainly cannot. Call me an idealist, but I like to think that a human being''s capacity for understanding is limited only by their emotional drive. The idea of an INTELLIGENCE QUOTIENT sickens me, since it measures only current knowledge and a TENDANCY toward knowledge assimilation. As human beings, we have a tendency to only strive for what we are TOLD we can achieve, so more often than not, IQ is a self fulfilling prophecy.

So, you''re me. What do you do? You want to reflect a narrative, but to use this technique you need to abandon your principles which you have pondered labouriously over for a solid three years (if anybody wants to take me up on this one, know your stuff first. If you think I''m wrong, I want to know how and why! This is very important to me!) And the thing is, it doesn''t seem to come up in gameplay either way! So what the hell?!

NIPHTY: Slow down a minute, and know that I try to make no assumptions. I''m talking about Mental attributes ONLY, because everything else is factually accountable. This is about how we learn as humans, and I wouldn''t have brought it up if I hadn''t been reading about it! Look back at you statement on the nature of magic. Think about that; THE NATURE OF MAGIC. C''mon, Niphty, how can you make a declaritive statement about something that doesn''t (evidently) exist! Is there something you aren''t telling us?