12 Jun, 2010, Tonitrus wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
This is all off the top of my head, so it may not make any sense and may or may not be idiotic.

I'm not too fond of stats. What is a stat? What does it do? Is there really any difference between a stat and a bunch of lesser skills? Stats also seem to lead towards issues that are somewhat disconcerting balance-wise. If an individual gets +20 dex somehow, it affects a multitude of skills.

I've had a few ideas regarding stats. I've thought of using them as a cap on skill ranks (i.e., you cannot exceed rank 5 dodge if you do not have 5 ranks of dexterity). I've thought of using them as a fall-back for nonexistent skills. Most recently I've been wanting to simply replace them with a set of skills. I just had an odd idea, however, involving using stats as sort of … super-skills.

Let's say you have 18 intelligence. This gives you 18 points to spend on intelligence based skills (magic, alchemy, lore). 10 Strength? 10 points for strength skills. Keep in mind that I consider skills to be somewhat fluid, where they can be raised with practice, or lowered (possibly) intentionally, or through neglect. I probably won't have helmets of +1 strength or things of that nature, so I'm not too worried about that aspect, but shape-shifting could perhaps adjust base stats, freeing additional points to be spent on the relevant skills, perhaps through use or by spending the points to shift them as closely as possible towards their all-time-high ranks. Lowering a stat would cause skill reduction to match. Not sure I'd do a lot of raising and lowering of stats.

The reason I am posting this is to ask the question: What implications would this system have? Is it worth even bothering with?

In a system with no base stats, individuals could practice skills randomly, with no particular pattern. There'd be no overarching structure. They could run fast (strength) but not have much lifting capacity (strength). While this is fine from a realism perspective, it goes somewhat against the typical mud concept. In a system with base stats, a person with a high strength will be better at all strength related things than a person with a low strength. The person with low strength could be better at the relevant skills to balance out, but the better strength still lends a major bonus. In a system with base stats, individuals tend to have more of a pattern with regards to what they are good at. A talented spell-caster will probably also be a talented alchemist. A nimble hobbit will make an excellent pick-pocket as well a natural dancer.

The system I'm considering goes against the latter idea. A talented spell-caster will probably not be a terribly good alchemist. He has a natural aptitude for it, and if he had to give up spell-casting, or were to spend a long time moving his skill slots around, he could make a talented alchemist. In normal day-to-day operations, however, he'd be good at one or the other, or passable at both (note that I favor cumulative costs for skill ranks). Likewise the pick-pocket could be an excellent dancer if he felt inclined to give up his life of crime, or even decided to take a break from it for awhile.

I'm not terribly sure what I think about this idea. Does anyone know any systems like this, or like enough that useful comparisons can be drawn?
12 Jun, 2010, Tyche wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
There are statless systems, but they are geared towards total role-playing.
However check this one out:
http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~sws99dsc/rpg/s...

It seems similar to what you might want.
12 Jun, 2010, shasarak wrote in the 3rd comment:
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I've always felt that a good thing for a stat system to do would be to act as a sort of soft-class system; so they're an indication of a character's natural aptitude and potential rather than immediate ability.

In the real world, a person's ability to do something depends a great deal on training but in some cases (not, of course, all) it also depends heavily on in-built potential. If you chose 10,000 young men at random and put them all through the exact same training programme as Usain Bolt, you would not end up with 10,000 people who can run the 100m race as fast as Mr Bolt can - chances are, in fact, that none of them would be able to. Mr Bolt clearly has some kind of innate potential as a sprinter - perhaps genetic, perhaps early-life environmental factors, perhaps both. Whatever they are, their effect is significant, and the extent to which a person does or does not possess them sets practical limits on how good a sprinter they can be, regardless of how hard they train.

So, one can imagine a MUD system in which you have stats like muscle-building (not "strength"), precision, agility, concentration, memory, observation, creativity, reasoning, spatial skill, etc. which, between them, determine how effective any given type of training is on that character. Someone who has a high precision stat might make a good picker-of-locks, jeweller or violinist; so, if he trains in lock-picking he will advance faster than someone with a lower precision skill, and the ultimate grade of lock-picking to which he can aspire, assuming suitable training is available, will also be higher. (My preferred system would not be to have a hard cap, but to steadily increase the amount of training need to improve a skill by 1 point as the skill level rises, so that training brings progressively diminishing returns; the amount of training needed to produce a beneficial result would increase more rapidly for someone with a low stat score).

With a system like this, of course, anything that modifiesstats should be approached with caution, unless it is simply a way to redistribute points between stats rather than add or subtract from the total (and even that might pose thematic difficulties).
14 Jun, 2010, Littlehorn wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
What's a stat system? I think you should define that first before anything else. Many designs have statistics in which you track statically or dynamically, and then short term or long term.

It seems you're referring to some type of RPG System where you have the traditional statistics (strength, dexterity, etc). Then you're trying to combine additional statistics into that system like memory, creativity or muscle-building on top of the RPG System layer. I think if you try looking at them as individual systems that all play a role into the overall big picture (RPG System) then you can better determine each system that's easier to maintain and understand.

I've found that basic mind-mapping software helps you with the big picture stuff. For example, creating your base RPG System with your Base Stats and then creating additional systems as expansions to the core systems. Your base stat system will consist of the base stats you would traditionally start your character with and then your expansion stat systems could enhance those base stats later on in the character development phases. You could easily create expansion systems that contain feats like "observation" or "muscle-building" that enhance the base stats in progression or simply add modifications (+5 strength) to the base stat system.

Either way, in order to wrap your head around some type of solution, I think it's better to understand that not all systems are the same system. It's fine to split things up into categories, groups or whatever in order to correct design systems that work together as they're meant to in game design. That way you have better control of each system and their individual parts instead of controlling one mega-system that you will more than likely split into sections when you want to rip or tweak portions of the system itself. Thus, giving you a better overview of what you may want and how each system could interact with each other during the unknown phases of your design.
14 Jun, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Tonitrus said:
What is a stat? What does it do?

Whatever you want it to be, and whatever you want it to do. Personally I use stats in the same sort of way that most muds use levels and classes - the more stats you've got, the more powerful you are, and your base stats also determine which abilities (talents) are available.

Tonitrus said:
Is there really any difference between a stat and a bunch of lesser skills?

Depends on your implementation. I rather like the WoD roleplaying system, where you resolve most contests by adding a stat to a skill and rolling that many dice. Stats and skills are usually values out of 5, meaning they have approximately the same value (although there are fewer stats, so they're used more often - but also cost more exp to improve).

Tonitrus said:
Let's say you have 18 intelligence. This gives you 18 points to spend on intelligence based skills (magic, alchemy, lore). 10 Strength? 10 points for strength skills. Keep in mind that I consider skills to be somewhat fluid, where they can be raised with practice, or lowered (possibly) intentionally, or through neglect. I probably won't have helmets of +1 strength or things of that nature, so I'm not too worried about that aspect, but shape-shifting could perhaps adjust base stats, freeing additional points to be spent on the relevant skills, perhaps through use or by spending the points to shift them as closely as possible towards their all-time-high ranks. Lowering a stat would cause skill reduction to match. Not sure I'd do a lot of raising and lowering of stats.

The reason I am posting this is to ask the question: What implications would this system have? Is it worth even bothering with?

Sure, it sounds like it could work well, although I can imagine it would be harder to balance (particularly if you have a lot of stats) and I'm not generally a fan of stat/skill decay. The skill point pools remind me a little bit of the exp system in Fable actually.

Tonitrus said:
In a system with no base stats, individuals could practice skills randomly, with no particular pattern. There'd be no overarching structure.

Once again it depends. If you were using a skill tree/web, you'd end up with an overall skill structure even without stats.

Tonitrus said:
Does anyone know any systems like this, or like enough that useful comparisons can be drawn?

Aren't most muds like that (in regard to stat/skill separation) to some degree? You have stats and you have skills, but the former has no real influence on the latter (other than to perhaps determine how many you can learn). Sure, a warrior with a higher strength will do more damage when he kicks (as he would with any other attack), but he won't be any better at kicking. Likewise dexterity won't make a thief any better at picking locks, nor will intelligence make a mage better at casting fireballs.
14 Jun, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Aren't most muds like that (in regard to stat/skill separation) to some degree? You have stats and you have skills, but the former has no real influence on the latter (other than to perhaps determine how many you can learn). Sure, a warrior with a higher strength will do more damage when he kicks (as he would with any other attack), but he won't be any better at kicking. Likewise dexterity won't make a thief any better at picking locks, nor will intelligence make a mage better at casting fireballs.

Many SMAUG skills take into account your stats in addition to your skill learn level when computing your chance of success. It's all quite inconsistent, and certainly not all skills work this way, but it's not always the case that things are separated like this.
14 Jun, 2010, Littlehorn wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
The games I've experienced include the statistic in how well the skill will perform. Other cases, the statistic is like a buffer and when it's lowered, you have less chances of success with said skill.

My system factors in the primary stat of the skill. Having higher intelligence means that your spells will have a greater chance of improving when casting as well greater chance of success over failing. When your intelligence is lowered, then your spells will have a lesser chance of improving when casting as well greater chance of failure over success. It's a good balance and trade-off to making statistics important to the character and making exploiting your opponents weakness important in combat (PVP MUD). Thus, you can say that having higher intelligence makes certain spells better than others.

This makes sense to me because statistics represent a value or measure of some type of attribute. For example, if you have higher strength then more than likely you will become better at punching someone out with your fist than having lower strength. The confusion normally falls on what actually becomes better? In this case, the increase is in the damage output. However, it's also true that no matter how strong you are, throwing a better punch may not purely be on how strong you physically are as a being. It may also factor in a new technique that could overcome your strength limitations or maybe a key point on the face that's maybe a weakness. This is something that could factor in intelligence (Jet Li versus Arnold Schwarzenegger).

This is why I mention things like feats or whatever. Additional skills that are enhancements or expansions of the core skill or statistic sets. For another example, Enhanced Damage primary stat is strength. Having higher strength means you have a greater success of doing enhanced damage to your opponents. Then you have something like Dirty Fighting (passive skill) that uses another statistic in order to find weaknesses in your opponents body to do more damage. If one skill fails, then the other may kick in to make up for the damage (or strength) you have lost. Thus, further enhancing each other and working together in harmony in order to correctly make up for not being the strongest race or being in the game.

But that's just my example.
15 Jun, 2010, quixadhal wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
In the classic D&D system, a stat was an attribute of the character which could only rarely be changed in a permanent way, and then usually only be very rare and expensive magic. So, when you were born (rolled), you mage got a constitution score of 7. This meant anything which used constitution as a base would end up bad more often than not. When you gained a level, you subtracted 1 from your hit points gained (mage rolled 1d4, so you got 1d4-1). When you rolled a saving throw vs. most physical effects (poison, etc.), you subtracted 1 making it harder to pass.

There were plenty of magical artifacts that would raise your con a point or two as long as you wore them, or had them in your possession. There were spells and rituals to do the same. Potions, all kinds of ways to temporarily increase that number. But to permanently raise your con took huge magic, on the order of a wish spell.

Thus, stats were treated as broad aptitudes for various types of things. When you made up a new skill, you'd base the skill on one or more stats, which would affect how easy it was for various characters or classes to use them. Reading a scroll would be based on intelligence, which would be easier for someone with an 18 int, and that would mean it was more likely to be easier for classes that used int as their primary stat (mages). Some races also got bonuses and penalties to stats, which canted them towards particular types of classes (elves got +1 int, -1 str – dwarves got +1 con, -1 int).

So, in the classic D&D sense, stats were inherent aptitudes for general classes of skills. You could think of them as meta-skills, but they had a broader focus, in that they were also part of the overall system.

DikuMUD was based very strongly ON D&D, but they deviated from the D&D mechanics in quite a large number of ways, and as David said, not very consistently. :(

EDIT: I should note that I'm referring to the classic 2nd edition AD&D rules, not the later computer-friendly 3rd or 4th edition systems. Those are… weird. *grin*
16 Jun, 2010, shasarak wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Littlehorn said:
It seems you're referring to some type of RPG System where you have the traditional statistics (strength, dexterity, etc). Then you're trying to combine additional statistics into that system like memory, creativity or muscle-building on top of the RPG System layer.

I'm not sure if that was aimed at me or not; but if it was then no, that's not what I was suggesting. I've never liked the traditional six D&D stats in a MUD context, and my idea was that the system I was suggesting should be used insteadof them, not as well as.

So, "Strength" (for example) is abolished in favour of something which represents "strength-increase potential" - in other words, how easy it is for the character to become stronger through training, and at what point diminishing returns start to kick in. A character who studies (say) weight-lifting, breaking down doors, or (to a lesser extent) war-hammer use, would advance more rapidly in those skills if he has high "muscle-building potential"; acquiring additional strength is assumed to be part of the training process.

"Dexterity" has more of a "potential" quality to it, but I don't like it because it's too vague - it should, at the very least, be broken down into something like "agility" (useful for budding gymnasts) and "precision" (useful for budding watchmakers or snipers).

"Intelligence" annoys me because I feel that whether a character behaves cleverly or stupidly is something that should be determined by RP considerations; in table-top games it always used to wind me up if I thought of something clever only to be told "sorry, your character isn't intelligent enough to think of that". It's fine to have a stat which determines (for example) magical energy reserves, but I see no reason to connect it to RP-driven problem-solving ability.

"Wisdom" I've never even come across a satisfactory definition of in a D&D context (aside from "it's what clerics need").

"Constitution" is the most viable of the traditional six, because most of the things that depend on it are actually likely to be coupled by viable thematic considerations - the ability to take more physical damage before being disabled, and to resist poison or disease, are plausibly connected.

And "Charisma", it seems to me, is probably better handled as a series of different "social combat" skills rather than a single stat.
16 Jun, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 10th comment:
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Quote
"Intelligence" annoys me because I feel that whether a character behaves cleverly or stupidly is something that should be determined by RP considerations; in table-top games it always used to wind me up if I thought of something clever only to be told "sorry, your character isn't intelligent enough to think of that". It's fine to have a stat which determines (for example) magical energy reserves, but I see no reason to connect it to RP-driven problem-solving ability.

I see no problem at all with having a character be smarter than the player, and be told things by the DM that the player might not think of, simply because the character is supposed to be very smart. It can be frustrating to be told that your character is in fact dumber than you are, and making calls like that seems extremely difficult, but, well, it's the logical flip-side and is at least consistent.
16 Jun, 2010, Littlehorn wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
shasarak said:
Littlehorn said:
It seems you're referring to some type of RPG System where you have the traditional statistics (strength, dexterity, etc). Then you're trying to combine additional statistics into that system like memory, creativity or muscle-building on top of the RPG System layer.

I'm not sure if that was aimed at me or not; but if it was then no, that's not what I was suggesting. I've never liked the traditional six D&D stats in a MUD context, and my idea was that the system I was suggesting should be used insteadof them, not as well as.


Doesn't matter what you replace them with, it's the core RPG system for your game. You can replace them with all new statistics, equations and etc, it's still your RPG system; traditional to D&D or not. The point was how you classify the system for easier understanding rather than saying all statistics in your MUD refers to the same system because not all statistics belong to the same system. :wink:

Just for reference: making systems more complex doesn't make them any better. It can actually do more harm than good because you do lose all familiarity to the system or game when you start hitting those stages to the end user (player). It's very similar to the argument on why most games don't stop copying the wheel model instead of doing something different. The answer lies in what the end users accept and don't accept because in the end, if players are not familiar with a certain way of doing things then they are highly likely to be turned off from the game. For example, removing traditional directions from your MUD and creating all new direction systems could cause players to not find your game attractive. Another example for MMO's would be removing the traditional camera/keyboard controls to something totally new to fit with your new style of game play.

Something to keep in mind regardless.
17 Jun, 2010, Chris Bailey wrote in the 12th comment:
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Littlehorn: You suggest that straying from the "standardized" RPG system will drive people away? In my experience, people play different and new games for a new experience. What would be the point in playing multiple games if they were all identical? While I do agree that a few select players could be put off by the fact that your game is not exactly like one they played before, I think that you would gain more with your originality. Furthermore, I believe all game developers should strive to be original in their designs.
17 Jun, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 13th comment:
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They say that the best innovations are those that leave *almost* everything the same, but revolutionize just one or two aspects…
17 Jun, 2010, Littlehorn wrote in the 14th comment:
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Chris Bailey said:
Littlehorn: You suggest that straying from the "standardized" RPG system will drive people away? In my experience, people play different and new games for a new experience. What would be the point in playing multiple games if they were all identical? While I do agree that a few select players could be put off by the fact that your game is not exactly like one they played before, I think that you would gain more with your originality. Furthermore, I believe all game developers should strive to be original in their designs.


Depends on the systems really. What I say is based on research though – traditional versus original. When you start dabbing in what customers and or players accept, it's common they accept what's traditionally familiar to them. Good example is like debating fantasy over sci-fi. Which market is bigger and which market would yield higher results. There are good SCI-FI games out there, but traditionally, fantasy is still more attractive based on previous experiences from the end user for that specific genre of gaming or product (like MUD).

Anyways, I was talking about totally re-wrapping the RPG system. No matter how you wrap the system, it's still your RPG system so try to deny it!
17 Jun, 2010, Chris Bailey wrote in the 15th comment:
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Personally I would much rather learn something entirely new than rehash something I've done a million times hoping that some small tidbit has been modified. Isn't most of the fun in the learning?
17 Jun, 2010, Chris Bailey wrote in the 16th comment:
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Littlehorn said:
Anyways, I was talking about totally re-wrapping the RPG system. No matter how you wrap the system, it's still your RPG system so try to deny it!


I know what you were talking about, I was only responding to the last bit of what you said. None of the rest interested me. =)


EDIT: Fixed stupid formatting mistake.
17 Jun, 2010, Littlehorn wrote in the 17th comment:
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Chris Bailey said:
Personally I would much rather learn something entirely new than rehash something I've done a million times hoping that some small tidbit has been modified. Isn't most of the fun in the learning?


You are the minority my friend. :biggrin:
17 Jun, 2010, Chris Bailey wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Littlehorn said:
Chris Bailey said:
Personally I would much rather learn something entirely new than rehash something I've done a million times hoping that some small tidbit has been modified. Isn't most of the fun in the learning?


You are the minority my friend. :biggrin:




Apparently so! =)
17 Jun, 2010, Littlehorn wrote in the 19th comment:
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It doesn't mean it's right or wrong. Niche games or systems can do very well. It's just damn hard to do something innovative that's still attractive and or sells. It's the common issue within game development. Many players want something innovative, but when you introduce innovative it can have a high tendency to be rejected because users have to adapt or maybe learn something new. Then it doesn't become about innovation anymore, it becomes about how the developer broke the game or didn't design the game right in the first place.
17 Jun, 2010, Chris Bailey wrote in the 20th comment:
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I suppose I can see where you are coming from. An example: I keep wanting to give Godwars II an honest try, but I can't seem to get into it. It seems like a very well designed system but at times I feel like I can't be bothered to figure it out. Yeah, I retract my argument.
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