Quote from: flyingmice;623911I don't "set up" anything in that sense. That's not the way I run games. Frequently, however, a character does attempt something she's not good at. That's up to the character, and to the operations of chance. Failure *is* an option, and works in its own way to generate interesting play.

-clash

Definitely. And it's always interesting when a situation doesn't match up to a character's core competencies; it says something about what the character is about, and ends up making the game more interesting. The weakling getting into a fistfight is more interesting to me than the strong guy doing it every time.

Quote from: flyingmice;623911I don't "set up" anything in that sense. That's not the way I run games. Frequently, however, a character does attempt something she's not good at. That's up to the character, and to the operations of chance. Failure *is* an option, and works in its own way to generate interesting play.

-clash

I don't disagree at all.

What about systems that reward failure, such as aspects? Maybe not quite failure, but duress or weakness.

Would it work to reward the PC for excelling at what he's good at and then letting him use said reward to help with stuff he sucks at.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;623934I don't disagree at all.

What about systems that reward failure, such as aspects? Maybe not quite failure, but duress or weakness.

Would it work to reward the PC for excelling at what he's good at and then letting him use said reward to help with stuff he sucks at.

Aspects per se don't actually reward anything. They are descriptors which can be mechanically triggered to give an advantage. FATE, which uses aspects, can reward failure because the GM can trigger them against the character, and reward the player when the "compel" is accepted. Other games which use aspects and other similar mechanic-linked descriptors do not necessarily do this.

That said, there are many games which reward failure in different ways. That concept can work very well if that is what is desired.

-clash

RPGs have several ways of defining characters: races, attributes, classes, skills, backgrounds, advantages/disadvantages. All of these are inter-related and redundant with each other to some extent. Most games don't use all of them, and you could easily take out rolled or point-buy attributes and get most of the effects via advantages/disadvantages if you wanted (GURPS survives with 4 stats mostly because most character variations are covered by these), or in some cases with skills (a character can work out in the gym and get more muscle mass so you could make Strength a skill) and so on. Perhaps most games have attributes because this is simpler than the alternative, actually.
 
You can also set up defaults in the rules for anything you don't want to be an attribute - e.g. how D&D has assumed movement rates by race, whereas other games sometimes have Speed scores. You only really need attributes for values which you want to vary substantially between characters.