quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Just a few thoughts, I am not quite sure where this is going to go:
Why not seperate combat statistics and social statistics?
Combat statistics can be easily represented as numbers why social statistics are best represented as an attribute e.g. ''cared of spiders'' or ''will not hit a woman''

I wonder if the same way of handling people like:
character:
good-looking, trained-in-weaponsmithing, very-charismatic
could be used for combat in such a system with traits such as:
adept-with-scimitar, etc
The problem with handling combat in addition to this "new"/non-statistic driven game is perhaps getting away from statistic-driven combat as well. Of course, avoiding combat mostly or altogether could just as easily make for an interesting game.

I think that having a system where stats are affected by a character''s perception of themselves don''t solve the real issue, which is how the player percieves their character. If a player sees "Courage = 10, afraid of spiders" that is just a translation of "Courage = 10, Courage = 7 with spiders". It doesn''t abstract the statistic for the player in any way, it just hides th numbers. It still leads to the same basic stats fiddleing, just with an added twist.

Reading through the last APs post has also brought something else to my attention that is present in both mine and his ideas. It''s the concept of self-discovery and what that means in terms of the game. While it works fine for a player to pick up a sword and be so terrible he injure''s himself with it, it''s not nearly as reasonable for him to go and talk to someone and be so rude he get''s slapped without having some realization that it would happen in advance, unless is was an accident or something. Unless the character is going through the old "I woke up and now I can''t remember anything" routine, having the character not be familiar at least somewhat with his/her personality is unbelieveable.

For social stats, perhaps the statistics should define a range of actions, much like was suggested before. However, they character needs to start off with a blank slate, so that their characteristics can be difined by the player. For example, if there is a character that is always quiet and keeps to himself, he can still make a speech, but he will not be nearly as eloquent as an experience public speak. Or maybe he''s so quiet that he can''t even do it at all. It''s kind of like a player can act however they want, but the farther it is from their natural tendencies, the more difficult it becomes.

tj963

Let me refine my idea just a bit.

In regards to a player entering a room and noticing an antique Gun displayed on a wall, that type of thing could have an associated attribute, like Antiquity_Interest:Guns. Some kind of MMORPG or MUD, or even just the GM would check for the existance of this attribute and if it was there, they''d point it out as a classic Smith and Wesson crack-open revolver. If the attribute wasn''t there, then its just an old gun.

As for deriving battle attributes, since most RPG roll to determine effects anways, we just have a class of combat attributes, and a set of attributes on weapons, and from them we determine the numbers required. It would be probably neccessary to keep some kind of record of progression, like level, or perhaps a tiered description like I recommended before. Regardless, we take related combat attributes, Weapon_Skill:Sword, Manual_Dexterity, Good_Targetting, and we consider some constants related to them. Suppose we roll a 2d6 to determine a hit, those three skills could act as +1 bonuses to a base that we pick off of level or whatever. And then for damage dealt, you assign a base from the weapon and have a +1 bonus from the Weapon_Skill:Sword.

My point is that you can pull out what we''ve considered basic from having a list of attributes. What the benefits are that with such a clearly defined list of YES/NO determinations, you can construct a world that can easily figure out how to describe itself to a player, and the player isn''t stat-tinkering because theres no specific numbers to deal with on his end.

if Horny_Bastard then
"Theres a great looking blonde dancing in the middle of the crowd."
else
"Theres a crowd around a woman dancing."

I think you will always need the numbers for fighting. Even if you use statements like ''proficient with sword'' the numbers are still there, just hidden. And as I pointed out, in real life you can choose to build up your strength or your speed. If your stats represent how good you think you are then it alleviates some of the problems of stat fiddling becuase the stats that the player can see can only be used to gauge the players progress. You cannot compare them with another character becuase one character who thinks he is strength 5 could be stronger than another character who thinks he is strenght 10.
The only way a player can judge how good there character is in real world terms is to get into fights.

Also, ''fear of spiders'' would equate to more than just a lower courage around spiders becuase it could have an effect on the party intereaction. For instance evil characters would laugh at your fear, practical joker types might put spiders in your bed etc.

Stuart

quote: Original post by StuartD
I think you will always need the numbers for fighting. Even if you use statements like ''proficient with sword'' the numbers are still there, just hidden.

Again, I think that depends on how you handle combat (of which there might be 3 similar ways dominating the market it seems), if it is necessary at all.

Inmate2993, your idea has some very nice features. One of the biggest benefits that I see, is that as you also mentioned, it''s fairly easy to construct a whole world and a set of interactions with the player based on those simple true/false properties. I think using such a system could be really good for describing player conversations and knowledge. However, I don''t see how it effectively hides the stats from the player. For example, if the player knows that his skills are Weapon_Skill:Sword, Manual_Dexterity, and Good_Targetting, he''ll naturally figure he''s a good swordfighter. In addition, if a player wants to be a sword fighter, he''ll look for these skills and others in the game. In fact, you could probably generalize these skills into some sort of hierarchy as you have done with the "Weapon_Skill:" which would be a logical. All the player has to do now is figure out how to get the skills he wants and he''s stat fiddling as easily as if you had just offered the menu. I like the idea a lot, and I think it has a lot of interesting applications, but I don''t think it deals with the problem.

To refine my idea a little, internally, you could keep track of as many stats as you want. What the player doesn''t know is how they to adjust them. You can even tell the character what they are, but he never knows his stats beyond the things he can do and the responses he gets from others. For example, not thast this would be very interesting, but if the player spend time making his character train by running in the mountains, several things would be affected depending on the stat system. For example, his endurace and speed will obviously rise. Since he''s in the mountains, his sure-footedness/balance may rise, because he''s outside, some statistics to do with nature might rise. If it''s winter, his resistance to cold might rise. How does he know his skills have improved? He can run faster, he notices more about nature, perhaps by mapping some nature stat onto an individual skill system as Inmate 2993 proposed. He doesn''t need to wear as warm clothes, and can be outside longer in the cold. Later, when he gets hit by ice magic, it doesn''t do as much damage. Or perhaps we can make the stats continuous integers, or even floats, and then base true/false attributes on those. So perhaps if a character had a certain level stats in guns and history, he would aquire an attribute like Antiquity_Interest:Guns.

I think there was some rambling in this post and I may have gone in circlesw a little, so please excuse that.

tj963

I think that by including stats that are used by more then one thing it would allow the player to gauge there profoiceny withouth any diffintive numbers. Stamina would be an example of one of these stats for instance lets go back to the example of the character running through the mountains, maybe at first the character can only run for a minute or two before they begin panting and need to stop and catch their breath. However the more they practice, the longer they can run before they need to rest. on an implimenation side this would amount to increasing the character running proficency, survial skill, and cold restince also possibly increasing the stamina stat. the character running proficeny, survial skill, and cold restince would deterime how quickly stamina is depleted. All of these stats would have impact on many other parts of the game, and there is really no need to make the visible.

Another idea that might work is to have skill/trait/talent/title discovery. The idea be that each time the character attempts an action that has a corrisponding or related trait then there is a chance that it will awaken that trait these could also be awarded once the skill reaches certain level. For instance maybe each time the character runs the through the mountain there is a chance they will develop the trait "mountain man". This trait might make surving in nature easier but social interactions more difficult. Or it could do nothing other then let the player know that survial and cold restience have reach a certain level.

further more why not let the player customize their character through skills? If the player want to player an expert swords men by aquiring all the swords skills they can then why not let them. It might not be what many of us want, but its what some people want so they should be allowed to play that way.

Also it could be interesting if that when a base skill reaches certain level the player can choose a proficeny/concentraion/specilization to open new deminsions to gameplay. For instance Antiques might be a base skill while Antiques:Firearms could be a specialization. The player might not know their characters Antiques skills level but they would know that there character knew antiques with specaility in firearms.

Potentialy there character would have no knowledge of there characters skills or attributes, except through the traits/characteristics/titles/etc... they possesed.

Actuly I think that could be rather interesting playing a game where I as the player don''t know what skills are availble instead only knowing those skills that I discovery through experimentation a big plus in non liner games since it increase replability.

Also I''m not saying that all qualitative elements don''t have a quantitative aspect just that the player only needs to see the qualitative aspect. For instance having a weapon_skill:good targeting may add +2 to hit. But the play doesn''t need to know that just that the character has weapon_skill:good targeting.

-----------------------------------------------------
Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

Somehow i see the obvious problem is that the most important part of a game is how fun it is to play, or more to the point how much people like to play it and this doesn''t always line up to the way a player acts within the game world.

Like Run_The_Shadows stated many players do not ''become the character'', or more simply they play how they want to since they really don''t care as long as they win or more importantly enjoy playing the game.

In multiplayer games this obviously causes problems and even in single player games this can wreck some of the gameplay and may not be tested for the storylines either.

One solution is to limit how a player can play making sure that out of character actions don''t happen, hard to do. And the other method is to adapt to how the player is playing like an uber fast Ultima-Online stats model where an insult may become a detriment to ones negative charma while their positive charma is still not low enough to allow good conv with ''evil/bad'' characters (and likewise to other types of stats.

I like to use a term when considering game design, LOA (Level Of Abstraction). The term basically describes the amount of abstration between the player and the game or game engine. I find this useful when trying to gauge how a player will be able to interact with the game world, and how the mechanics affect the player.

I''ve stated LOA here since i believe it is relevent when talking about how a player can interact with the ''stats'' the engine is using to govern the character. All that the designer has to do is decide how much abstraction is required to achive the gameplay they are looking for and also what kind of abstraction is required.

For the first one might not want the player stat tweeking, to achive this the said game designer decides that the stats used within the engine will be entirely transparent. The player will only be able to play the game, not decide how good they are, the manual and tutorial/first level loading screen/etc will explain to the user that there is a connection between their acts and how the character will be able to function in the future.

The second part is more of a genre tweeker. The viewpoint can be placed here and one might decide to use either a top-down clasic RPG style, or a Dues-Ex and maybe even a Q3A style of viewpoint. The way a player is able to control the character is also described here and once again a player may be able to control every thing the character does (invalidating the use of stats in favour of player attributes like reflexes, think Q3A), or only what the character does (making the player interact with the character through engine mechanics, think NWN)

This may not solve the idea of storyline or gameplay design but it can help for describing how a player interacts with the engine and the gameplay it employs.

I look forward to hearing what people think of the use of LOA and hearing some more solutions to the problem here.

< krysole || krysollix >
sleep, caffeine for the weak minded!

My point is not to limit a players ability to choose how they play, but to shape their character based on homw they play. Obviously, this has been done before, where using a skill increases one''s proficiency with it. However, generally the player is still stat fiddling, such as using their magic skill a litlle more so they can learn a new spell at the next level. In realy life, one gauges their cold resistance by how long they can stay outside before they feel like they''re about to freeze, and so it could be in a game.

tj963:

It depends on how you want to push the player into the role-playing atmosphere. See, if you want the player to play a role, then by all means he should be allowed to skill-fiddle at the top of the game. During the course of the game, he''d have a list that defines his behavoir and his perception of the world around him. However, if you want the game to play a role according to how the player want it, then you might as well just start all characters with no attributes and shape them according to how they play.

Consider the role of a Knight. He''d have sword-skills, he''d have some physical strength, and he''d be socially adepted (considering that he had been knighted by a king). If the player wanted this role, he''d pick out the appropriate skills. Likewise, a theif would have their attributes, and so on. NCPs would/should react differently to a knight and a thief, and likewise, the world would appear differently to a knight and a theif.

Now consider what happens when you design the game for some degree of mid-game character customization. Its not so much the player now seeing and interacting in the world differently, but rather the world making provisions the deal with the change in character. In the traditional role-playing sense, this falls out of the genre. Now you have players that will probably end up with characters whose skills make a good description of how the player behaves out in meatworld/real-life.

The issue comes up in a MMORPG/MUD format, you have to make provisions for both. My idea is good for design and conversation, but implementation needs a lot of work. Would you want to sit and name dozens to hundreds of skills and attributes and drawbacks and assign numeric effects for each? Its a large undertaking, a 6 stat system benefits from simplicity.