How well do you think it would work to design character development into the culture of an RPG world? In other words, self-development (stats++) would be a moderate factor in gaining authority, recognition, and/or respect from society, just as typical education does in the current real world. I'm in a futuristic setting, so tools to precisely measure abilities would be easy to come by. If I wanted to take it far, characters could literally discuss their abilities with numbers, or refer to situations that require a certain threshold of ability to pull off. Some characters would compete with each other to improve, and certain obscure factions would be hellbent on "leveling up". That's pretty much it. It's a simple concept. I guess you could say the Dragon Ball series does something similar to this, but that's far more light-hearted than my game's setting. Do you think something like this could work, taken seriously, in a far darker, cyberpunk setting?

We do it already IRL. My IQ is 180. I can bench press 300lbs. My reaction time is... whatever. A stat would just be a different scale. I can imagine the culture in your game would probably be far more competitive than our own or perhaps be very centered on eugenics.

If you want to incorporate it into the culture, then there are a few aspects to consider and throw around.

Firstly, if it is within the means of society to measure ability, then you will have a counter-culture somewhere where they reject these ratings. These counter-movements will naturally be made up of people who have very low "stats" at birth and were disown, exiled, or just forsaken by society and of people who are sympathetic to these outcasts or just plain want to be different.

There will also be religions establishments around some warped version of the mainstream based on some weird, supposed, hidden "stat" (scientology?).

There will also need to be a black market for artificial stat enhancements.

On top of that, you can build a government conspiracy to build machines that extract certain "stats" from people and give it to others for the sake of creating a super-human or army of super humans.

So, yeah, you can wrap everything you see in modern society into this, since we all know that human nature never changes.

Here is one thing that can spice things up. The inclusion of a known, yet unmeasurable "stat(s)". Things that cannot have quantitative values attached to them and seemingly have no visible effect. They are visible stats with no known measurable value and with seemingly chaotic and random hidden effects. It can be the big question mark that can be used to drive the story and even the game.

Yes it could work. Look what top athletes are discussing about : their aim scores, their endurance tests, drugs that help gain 12% legally or not, their breath capacity, their weight...

In your world it would just be that the average person takes a regular medical visit to measure their stats and thus is aware of it. Ads are made for fitness center or classes to increase these scores. It is not very different from the world of today. I guess that a cyberpunk setting would have restricted zones "Mensa zone : IQ <130 not tolerated" or "athletics meeting : PHYS 120+ only"

It would work, but please please don't use gamer terms like 'stats', 'leveling', etc. It would be very immersion breaking. Keep it unique to your game word. Also, while exact numbers are easy to make, it can still be fuzzy in a different sense. Think about how your weight fluctuates throughout the day. You might be 160 and 163 later that day or 159 in the morning, w/e. The measured results may be an exact number, but they can still be fuzzy.

One thing I was thinking about recently that ties in with this ideas is having special events/bonuses like Fallout perks when you reach the highest or lowest level of a stat or skill, assuming stats and skills and be raised and lowered.

Max out luck and you become the luckiest person in the world - You always pull a winning lottery ticket and win at games of chance but while people like a winner, they hate someone who wins all the time. Luck roles succeed 99% of the time but all npc have an negative reaction to you.

Likewise have the lowest level of luck and you become a walking misfortune - Nothing good ever happens to you and are always surrounded by misfortune. Sure you may walk down the wrong alley and get mugged but on the bright side an awful lot pianos seem to fall on muggers heads these days.

Or for instance if you had the highest pistol skill then opponents regularly show up to challenge you.

Personally I don't like it. I turned off the Dragon Ball cartoon about three seconds after one of the guys said something along the lines of "I must go get three more levels to stand a chance to defeat this guy" (well, the three-commercial-break powering-up-my-punch two-animation-frame segment didn't help either).

I don't mind all the stats in CRGPs but that is because in my mind it is separate from the game world, kind of meta game stuff that I can tweak to better enjoy the game. If the characters were to discuss them it'd take me out of the mindset immediately. I've been playing Fallout 3 lately (still?), but in my imagination my guy isn't actually seeing that he has precisely 75/100 lockpick ability, or 127 rads, or a 27% chance of a headshot. That information is presented for me alone, to better make my decisions of what to try; the PipBoy & VATS things are just a nifty presentation that matches the rest of the game's look and feel.

That said, of course you could make it work. But even then, as WeirdoFu said, only some of the people in such a world would get and use such information in the way you envision.

just my 2 cents...

That is a AWSOME idea, wish I saw this tread earlier. It could make for a perfect satire, not just of modern society, but video games and the internet too. Could make for the Dante's "Divine Comedy" of the modern age, possably even the singular "Birth of a Nation" for the game industry.

To quote Wiki:

Quote:

In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, ideally with the intent to bring about improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be funny, the purpose of satire is not primarily humour in itself so much as an attack on something of which the author strongly disapproves, using the weapon of wit.

Right now the advertiseing world uses something called the Q-Score to rank celebrities, name brands, and products basied on value and appeal...not too unlike those RPG stats/character level and scoreboard rankings.

So just make the setting in your game world highly focused around this sort of ranking system. The object being to raise your Q-score value, but this isn't just a sweetening of your stats, this is a fast paced hyper sensationalized cut throat compeditive requirement. If you maintain a steady Q-Score for too long, or *gasp* you drop in value then you are viciously stigmatized for it. If you arn't upwardly mobile you are dead weight in this society, off to the gas chamber with you!

Add in refrences to reality TV - "Huge boost to your Q-score! everybody can be a celebrity!". TiVio and YouTube rankings, even Blogs "OMG! Sally didn't mention Prada in her blog! I'm never speaking to her again! -10 Q-points!" Even the paranoia of haveing TV cameras on every street cornor "Sir! John Q there did not stop to watch the McDonalds commercial when he passed the TV in the store window...That's gonna lower his Q-Score, should we break out the riot gear and cattle zappers?".

Add in a game plot that suggests the players question whom is overseeing the application of this Q-Score (sorta who is watching the watchmen? but in this case its the peeps voteing on those "am I hot or not" websites) and you have a interestingly different satirical game.

In effect the point is you are holding the RPG game playing style of "grinding in the persuit of maximum stats" up for ridicule by linking it with societal and cultural issues.

Of course some won't "get it", or think its stupid but satire has that kind of effect on people. It also isn't something that has been done much before, at least not to this degree.

If you do this my humble request would be that you make the lore behind it convincing. To somewhat echo krez's sentiment, I prefer RPG environments that are worlds unto their own. Even if the depiction is simple / retro, I want it to be internally consistent. So if you do it, be sure to give a decent amount of thought to what it would mean if we could rank / stratify society based on what have been typically unquantifiable (or nebulous) values. (In my mind it hints at a highly objectifying, materialist society, but I'm sure there are many other interpretations.)

Gattaca.