I had an interesting Idea strike me yesterday that I couldn't hash out here for obvious reasons. I thought I'd handle it here.


Due to space limits I had to chose a somewhat limited title. This isn't about just smart characters, it's characters who have somehow gotten to be superhumans... ubermench and players who need to make their characters so to be competetive.

You see it in liscenced games from time to time, and in other games. Characters are statted up with genius level intelligence to justify their high degree of skill in something like 'Mechanics' or are fantastically agile to justify their excellent skill with a gun... despite their depictions as ordinary people, stupid but capable people, clumsy but accurate people.

Some folks like to solve this by making ever more subdivisions of attributes. Others remove native ability (stats) from the equation as much as possible, occasionly to the point of making one ask 'Why even have stats in the first place then?'. Saw that a bit in older editions of shadowrun, just as I see people focus on maxing their stats out in newer shadowrun. In order to be the best shooter, you also have to have the talent of the best gymnast...

Am I the only one who sees this disconnect? I doubt it, I do.

And while I think my orginal idea of making attributes simply add a few extra skill points is one way to handle it, I think I may have found a better way to model this. Not that it is necessary in the system I'm mentally camped on at the moment, but damn it, i feel smart and I'm hoping to refine it for later use.




Most games these days seem to include some level of 'advantages' or 'merits' or what have you.  At least one game those are the primary ways of making a character.  I simply suggest capitolizing on this.

Make an advantage (already common enough) like 'natural talent' or what have you. However, rather than give out a flat bonus to the skill (making it necessary to be the best to have it) or making it easier to learn said skill (often of minimal use)...

Simply have the natural talent completely replace the controlling attribute/stat for the skill with numbers comparable to teh optimal stat... for that skill.  

In GURPS this is a bit awkward, as the 'optimal' stat has a pretty wide variance. In one game having a twelve in a stat might be 'damn good' while in another a '15' is average. Not so much the later but it would make scaling hard.

Other games are easy. In something like Dream Pod 9's games, the ability replaces your + bonus from a stat (regardless of value positive or negative) with a flat +3... for that one skill.  The stupidist (-3) mechanic in the world is still as good as the smartest... if they happen to have a talent for it.

Am I expressing it awkwardly? I feel so. This came up in a discussion of Serenity, where Kaylee is as smart as the Genius level Doctor, just to explain her mechanical talent.  With this type of 'advantage' or 'merit' or what have you, she could be the sweet, ordinarily intelligent girl she supposedly is, and still be a top notch 'equal to the best and brightest' mechanic she is portrayed as in teh show/movies.


So, what does the peanut gallery think?

Quote from: SpikeSome folks like to solve this by making ever more subdivisions of attributes. Others remove native ability (stats) from the equation as much as possible, occasionly to the point of making one ask 'Why even have stats in the first place then?'. Saw that a bit in older editions of shadowrun, just as I see people focus on maxing their stats out in newer shadowrun. In order to be the best shooter, you also have to have the talent of the best gymnast...

Am I the only one who sees this disconnect? I doubt it, I do.

Not necessarily. Attributes or Stats are a character's innate abilities. Just because you can shoot a gun well doesn't mean you're a good acrobat.

Each skill requires seperate training apart from the attribute. That's how it should work ("real world" arguements aside.)

You could also do something like this:

Each point of Attribute is "raw" and not really usable in itself.  It adds to a roll, but the roll always succeeds minimally if you make it.  Each point of skill is "refined."  It not only works for itself, but also for the attribute.  So each point of skill, up to the attribute in ranks, is worth +2 (or +3, since you add the attribute as well anyway).  So a guy with Dex 3 and Gun 4 gets a plus 10 to his roll. A guy with Dex 5, a superb level of agility, only gets +5.

In addition, skill wins would count as full successes, not just minimal ones.


However, my mechanical wankery aside, I like your idea too.  What you are basically saying is that you can buy an attribute specialization, giving you an attribute as if you had a higher score, but only for that one skill.  

The limit here is that will only work in certain games.  Like it's pointless in a Stoyteller game, since it's all dice either way.  It's also pointless in a game where you always add the same stat to the same attribute (like a sneak roll is always Dex + Stealth), since specializations and higher skill ranks is the answer to that.  In a game with mix-and-match skills to attributes, and attributes do something different from skills, however, it's a good idea.

Quote from: SpikeYou see it in liscenced games from time to time, and in other games. Characters are statted up with genius level intelligence to justify their high degree of skill in something like 'Mechanics' or are fantastically agile to justify their excellent skill with a gun... despite their depictions as ordinary people, stupid but capable people, clumsy but accurate people.

The simplest solution is the Fudge solution:  Don't base skills on attributes

And, yes, I think that can be justified on both "realism" grounds and game mechanics grounds.

In the case of realism, in most cases, training and practice matters much more than natural aptitude.  Simply being intelligent doesn't give you knowledge of history.  Simply being agile doesn't allow you to do a gymnastic routine on the uneven bars.  Simply being manually dextrous doesn't allow you to play the piano.  And so on.  

In the case of game mechanics, simply having characters "buy" straight skill levels means that you get rid of the double-point effect -- spending points in two different ways to create a single skill level -- which is the very heart of min-maxing.  It makes character creation and balance (which is an idea that I think has some merit, even though others disagree) much easier.

If you absolutely must relate attributes to skills, I do it one  of two ways.  The first is to have attributes contribute only a fraction (e.g., Hero's INT/5+Level) or a bonus after a certain level (Traveller's +1 if INT is A+).  The second is what GDW's House system did, which is to use attributes to modify the cost of buying skills instead of modifying the skill.

Quote from: SpikeSimply have the natural talent completely replace the controlling attribute/stat for the skill with numbers comparable to teh optimal stat... for that skill.

You'd need to make sure that the natural talent doesn't replace the controlling attribute as a way for players to buy up high skill levels such that they dump on their attributes and buy the advantage for the handful of skills that they really care about.  It would probably be good to limit characters to one or two natural talents.  Another idea would be to use the advantage to alter the controlling attribute to a different, yet plausible, attribute.

I think you're brushing up against something that perplexes me every time I try to consider stats, attributes, skills, etc.  I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but...

To me, if you really want to model skills, each has to have a mental and physical component. The doctor in Serenity is a genius not because he is a doctor, but because he could probably be a nuclear physicist or whatever - his intelligence is not limited to physican-related issues.  Kaylee is a genius at mechanical things, but probably wouldn't understand biochemistry or such.

It gets to me in things like sports.  Look at Peyton Manning.  I doubt he could be a physician, but the man is a genius...at football. I was always of the opinion that you can't be truly great at sports without understanding the game you are playing at a "genius" level. Natural ability will get you far, but the truly great also have a game level IQ far greater than the average professional.

So if every Skill was somehow split between Mental and Physical - would that help?  You could have some skills that require little of one or the other, but just about everything we do is some mixture.

Sorry for ramble...

In Hearts & Souls (supers games where highly skilled people across many fields are common) skills are essentially an aspect of an "attribute" (Prowess for most, Deftness for some high agility based ones). This is to allow people like Doctor Doom, and Mr. Fantastic--both very smart, but very differently skilled. Along with the original Toad (who was a bit of an idiot, but also technically skilled)

I concur with John Morrow here.  The problem is that RPGs are trying to give answers to the age-old "Nature versus Nurture" question -- trying to take abstract qualities like "Intelligence", "Wisdom", "Perception", and/or "Charisma" -- and using them to derive aptitude for skills.  

I think you're better off just cutting out the abstract step.  i.e. Don't have any abstract stats, but just have a number of aptitude/talent scores based on skill groups.  

Typical example: You want someone who is good at foreign languages and diplomacy, but who isn't good at science and technology.  Depending on the system, you might set Intelligence high and take some disad that he's not good with mechanics or sciences.  Or you might take Charisma and a language talent with lower Intelligence.  What about his Perception?  

Particularly if you've got a bunch of skill numbers and groups anyway, I think it makes sense to just have stats for the skill groups instead of "raw" Charisma in the absence of social skills; or "raw" Dexterity in the absence of training; and so forth.  

I've got an essay on roughly this subject,
Nature vs. Nurture in RPGs

Well...

I've seen some games that almost completely disconnected the attribute from the skills as well, and that has always run equally false for me.  An utter spaz does not, typically, become an olympic class gymnast, no matter how much they practice. Likewise, typically a sub-literate individual doesn't go on to be a master psycist... but when they do it is with phenomenal speed and authority of the subject feild.  Thus I do think modeling a 'Natural Ability' as replacing the controlling attribute is a useful method. Even in White Wolf games, allowing the 2 Dex character to roll 5 dex dice to shoot a motherfucker, while not simultaniously making him a nasty martial artist and dodge monkey.

Naturally, i'd advocate making it a 'one skill' thing OR, as in Serenity, just making it a Major advantage, thus too damn costly to replace attributes for EVERY skill.  Even just balancing it so buying it twice is nearly the same as 'maxing out' an attribute, or close too it, might be effective.

As I pointed out, I don't have much use for this immedeatly, as I'm working on an attributeless project, but it seemed an elegant solution.

James: In this case, the Natural Aptitude would be assumed to replace any Stat based factors, so would work in your senario too.

Codex: I'm not sure I followed your idea, can you rephrase it for me?

Quote from: SpikeI've seen some games that almost completely disconnected the attribute from the skills as well, and that has always run equally false for me.  An utter spaz does not, typically, become an olympic class gymnast, no matter how much they practice. Likewise, typically a sub-literate individual doesn't go on to be a master psycist... but when they do it is with phenomenal speed and authority of the subject feild.

In my experience working in a college computer lab for years, from other examples I've heard from martial artists and in other physical endeavors, and trying to learn various things myself, there seem to be (generalizing here) three rough groups of people when it comes to learning any skill:  (1) The Naturals, (2) Those Who Can Learn, and (3) Those Who Will Never Get It.

The naturals are people who often get a skill immediately and don't need to study or practice early on.  They usually run ahead of everyone at the lower skill levels but often struggle at higher skill levels.  Why?  Because so long as they rely on instinct, they aren't learning the skills and fundamentals that they need to get beyond their instinct.  They can learn and excel but it often requires hitting a wall, unlearning their reliance on instinct, and catching up to those who learned the skill the hard way.

Those who can learn are people who aren't naturals but if you give them a book to study or if they practice a lot, they'll steadily get better.  They take longer to get ahead at the lower levels but, because they learn the fundamentals and  how to learn, the only wall they hit is when the reach the absolute limits of their physical or mental capacity.  Often these people are the most reliable and consistent but they don't always reach the very top level of skill.

Finally, there are those who will never get it.  They are the people who just can't understand physics or programming or the klutz who can't do jumping jacks, never mind a routine on the uneven bars.  These people need to figure out something else they are good at because all they'll find is heartbreak trying to learn something that they just don't get.

All of those types can be modeled by attribute and skill approach but one approach won't get it right.  The people who can learn, which are the norm, are fairly well served by the Fudge approach.  Those who will never get it can be modeled by putting minimum attribute requirements on skills (e.g., forget just klutzy, a gymnast can't be very weak, either).  I'm not sure that the special features of the naturals needs to be modeled.  

So my suggestion, to address the klutzy gymnast problem in Fudge, is to put minimum attribute requirements on skills to simply prevent it.  Another option is to base skill cost on a governing attribute and make it prohibitive to learn higher levels of a skill if the governing attribute is very low.

I'm not saying you have to do that.  I'm just saying that your concern can be addressed without linking attributes to skills directly.

To be fair, John, I was thinking in a particular game system when I came up with the Idea, and realized it could be ported to a wide variety of games that do have more or less linked skill/attributes.

Right now, as a mechanic, I rather like it but it's useless to me.  Of my two rather neglected projects one is using an existing system without a need for this sort of thing, the other doesn't even have attributes!

Unless I want to start coming up with new game systems left and right I'm stuck wondering what I should do with this?

Answer? port it into the games I DO have that seem to need it.