Subheading: Character Construction "It is up to you to make a character that best suit''s your style of play" - Fallout, Vault Dwellers Survival Guide The player chooses the skills that they wish to play the game without atlering the given attributes. The skills that they choose will model the attributes that the players character has. If you have the skills of a medic then you will have intelligence. If you became a person with the gift of the gab then you would have some charisma. Also, the more skills you attain through the course of the game then the better the attributes you will have to rely on as well. This is real-life: "through effort you suceed". Why wouldn''t this work well for a game too? If you attain skills then you are rewarded with improved attributes for your effort. I love Game Design and it loves me back. Our Goal is "Fun"!

I''m not quite sure why you would need attributes as a separate entity in this case. It sounds like you''re building a skill web instead. Which works perfectly well.

Sorry, i should have explain the system that i was working on first. Attributes would still be used for determining the sucess of effort:

Skill in handgun = 50%
Agility = 15/20

Each attribute point above 10 is an addition of X% (3% for example)
Each attribute point below 10 is a subtraction of X% (3% for example)
10 is neutral.

So this person has skill of 62% in handgun. Attributes act as a pat on the back for the players effort. They won''t actually interact with them directly. The player will concentrate on their skills and gain attributes at certain levels of skill/s % in total.



I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

So you''re using attributes as a reward? If they don''t get to make use of those attributes, then it''s not a reward. Or is it a reporting system?

I feel that attributes are usefull for 2 things:

1. Unskilled actions (are you strong/quick/smart/healthy enough)
2. Untrained skill attempts (well, no, I''ve never actually walked a tightrope before, but it doesn''t look too HaaaAAAAAAAAA....).


Pax

Paul : you should definitely have a look at the Chaosium system. It''s used in RPG like "Call of Chtulhu" or "Stormbringer", and it uses something similar (it''s not the only system doing that, of course).

Basically, skills are linked to attributes. For instance, Medicine would be linked to Intelligence, just like Literracy, or anything based on your Intelligence. All those skills get a default value that is based on your attribute. The skills can be improved on their own, and if your attribute increase, the increase is reported on all the linked skills.

Having the skills influence on the Attributes seems very counterintuitive to me... because skills are a specialisation of your natural skills (your attributes). Medicine is a specialisation of your natural Intelligence into some specific area. You can be a very good Doctor and still totally suck in deductive logic. (ok, intelligence is not the best example).
What I am saying is that Medicine, in our example, represent the fact that you are improving your Intelligence attribute, but only in the specific area of Medicine, ergo it seems redundant to improve the Intelligence.

MAybe another example. Say I am a lumberjack, quite strong overall. By axing all day long, I improve the strength in my arms, say, Axe skill. But I don''t improve my legs at all...
the Strength would be an overall level, while the Axe would be a specialisation of my strength in the arms. I wouldn''t suddenly be better at running just because I am sawing trees all day long.

You could use your idea during the creation process though.
The players can''t really grasp all the links between an attribute and the skills linked to it. So you could let the players choose the skills they like, and from this, create the level of the attributes, that the player could then modify.
Imagine a warrior with skills in weapons, especially heavy ones, and who can build his arrows and fix his armor. It would seem quite natural that this guy has a good strength, and some dexterity (to fix armor, create arrowheads), and this imply he has been learning those skills somewhere, implying that he has improved his intelligence in the process (ok, this is VERY schematic)... so the player would end up with some points in strength, dex, and int, which would tell the player "hey! don''t make him a wimp with no brains, that doesn''t make sense with the skills you wanna use!". Rather than those stupid systems where "I am afraid you can''t do that Dave, you chose the wrong amount of Intelligence to create a Wizard, do it again.."

get my point ?

Re: ahw
Yeah, what you were saying was pretty much right up the avenue of what i was thinking about. The logic that i laid out in my last post was just off the top of my head. I havn''t spent enough time constructing the logic yet.

Just to go over what you said and i''m thinking:
-The use of attributes: Each attribute would act like a different type of energy.
-The use of skills: Skills provide the player with the ability to specialise. A way of focusing their energies.

The reason being is that this system might be applied to a cyberpunk type game (implants). The thing is is that, when you introduce easier ways to boost up your attributes then you have to create something of higher value to keep the challange in the game... this is where skills come in you see i.e. specialisation.

I''m thinking that with specialisation it will allow the game to be played in many different ways whilst the attributes are being used like an engine - suppling different energies. Thus you actually have multiply types of energy if you get the picture?!

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

Yep, apparently my explanations weren''t that confusing this time
Attributes are a raw potential, and skills indicate the fact that an attribute is being used for a specific task, it''s a sort of refined attribute ...

But I''ll repeat the second part of my post :
Using an attribute then skill system for the game is the most intuitive. But using a skill THEN attribute system during the creation of characters would be much more interesting for the player that doesn''t know the system yet, but knows what he wants the character to be.

As well, for cyber implants, there is a nice little thing in Simulacres Cyberpunk. Chips increase your level in any type of skill, but they won''t allow you to increase the boosted skill AT ALL. For instance, using a chip of japanese speaking won''t improve your japanese by a iota. Neither using a target acquisition software (autoaim) will improve your aiming at all...

youpla :-P

You can also check the rules from the Legend of the Five rings, they are some of the best I know, perfectly fit in the game world and logic.

I think this is important too, let me explain.
(I use my own generic rules traits/skills based)

In L5R, the world is almost like feodal japan, and the philosophy of 5 elements are dominating.
Because it''s a fantasy settings, the philosophy is the truth, so your character have five traits : earth, fire, water, air and void.
(Each element called ring is linked to two traits, water is strength and I don''t remember , fire is agility...)

The karma exist too, it said that if you do what you must well in this life your next will be better.
In the game, when you''ve played correctly you''re character, and you died of an honorable (??) death the Game Master can reincarnate you with part of some of you''re olds skills...

This rule/world logic integration is really something nice I wish to see more often.

-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

quote: By Ahw
As well, for cyber implants, there is a nice little thing in Simulacres Cyberpunk. Chips increase your level in any type of skill, but they won''t allow you to increase the boosted skill AT ALL. For instance, using a chip of japanese speaking won''t improve your japanese by a iota. Neither using a target acquisition software (autoaim) will improve your aiming at all...

So what you''re saying here is that a chip will boost your skill to point X instead of increasing the skill. So a chip will increase you''re skill stat but if your skill stat is already higher then it won''t make any difference??

quote: By Ingenu
The karma exist too, it said that if you do what you must well in this life your next will be better.
In the game, when you''ve played correctly you''re character, and you died of an honorable (??) death the Game Master can reincarnate you with part of some of you''re olds skills...

Yeah, well if you had talents in the game then you could have it so when the character dies and comes back to life then the skills that they had in the previous life are now talents. Thus encouraging the replayability of the game.


I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

PAul :
Well, it makes perfect sense to me, jut think about it.
If you have some muscular improvements, your real muscles don''t need to work that much, because all the effort is taken by your prothesis. If you lose your prothesis, your muscles, having no training, would actually be even worse than before the prothesis (for lack of training).

Similarly, a chipset of knwoledge (take a wetwired japanese translation system), won''t be using your neurons, but rather be an extension of the brain ... so you can assume (''cause here we are of course in the domain of sci-fi), that neurons don''t get ''tainted'' by the info in the chipset, thus you don''t *learn* japanese while using the chipset. Nor do you remember anything if the chipset is taken away. As well, since the chipset is (again, let''s assume that for the sake of argument) not selfmodifying, when you use it, you have a set level of knowledge, and that''s it.

Now, if you already had knowledge of the domain you are using a chip for, you could say that the neurons in the brain and the neurons in the chip communicates, and thus you slowly improve your natural level ? But I think this would really make the chip powerful...
Cyberpunk had a nice concept to limit the amount of wetware the players could get, they had a concept of "humanity". The more implants, the more your mental health would decrease, ultimately turning you into a rampaging psycho

youpla :-P