Stat Advancement at Character Creation vs During Gameplay
New Fire:
Excellent comments, everyone! Very insightful. You've given me a lot of good things to think about.
Let me add a little bit more to this discussion--
One of the over-arching ideas I am interested in pursuing with this game is emphasizing the playing of a character as opposed to the building of a character. That is, I want the choices a player makes when playing a character--the actions they take, the things they say, the way they go about doing things, etc--to be more important than the choices they make when building the character--what stats, skills, and items they choose, etc. Maybe I shouldn't say 'more imporant'--everything in the game should be important, yes? Otherwise there's no reason to include it! But when confronted with conflicts in the game, I want the players to be looking at what their characters can do and thinking in terms of those talents and abilities. I don't want them solving the conflicts by making major changes to their character for next session. I even considered not allowing stat increases at all after character creation. Of course, there are other ways to accomplish this aside from limiting player stat increase, I suppose.
Has anybody played or created a game where the characters have unchanging stats? And if so, was it fun/interesting, or did you find it limiting?
As some of you have said, however, there is no foolproof defense against power gamers, and there is no way to enforce rules in games you are not a part of. People will and should adapt games so that the game serves their needs. I may be worrying too much about this sort of thing--perhaps it should just be a recommended rule, rather than an intrinsic part of the game mechanics.
johnthedm7000:
Personally, for me part and parcel of a "heroic" and "dramatic" game is being able to go from "zero" to "hero", either in general or in specific capabilities. Assuming that you mean that your game favors a cinematic style of play, why are you worrying about this issue of realism? In cinema, legend, and fiction there are routinely individuals who drastically redefine themselves and "rise to the occasion", becoming great leaders, warriors etc. And in these cases, it's not a mater of improved training (skills) but rather increasing those basic qualities that define a person (attributes).
Now if you wanted to keep this level of realism but still allow characters to advance their attributes significantly you could have players assign attributes as normal during character creation, but also assign "potential" to each stat. A point of potential could increase the maximum value that the character could raise that stat to by 1 one, or else decrease the amount of xp (or similar resources) spent to increase it by a point. So for example you could have a character with the stats:
Strength: 1(2 potential points used) Max Stat: 4
Willpower: 3 (Max 4)
Stamina: 1 (2 potential points used) Max Stat: 4
Intelligence: 3 (Max 4)
This would mean that while this character might start off as physically weak, for whatever reason (whether genetics, favor of the gods, a magical bloodline, destiny, etc.) they have the potential to become strong and tough, should they choose that path. On the other hand, this character's intelligence and Willpower are likely to remain much the same for the rest of his or her life.
Ron Edwards:
Hello and welcome,
For this thread and its companion to continue, please set up and link to some external document that we can reference. It doesn't have to be your complete work, or even really anything more than what you have here. But it does need to be off-Forge. See the forum sticky thread for more about this policy.
Best, Ron
edited to clarify regarding both New Fire threads with this single post - RE
New Fire:
Sorry about the delay on this--I had to fix a few things on my website! http://newfirerpg.com/
DJ Ghost:
Ultimately I think that you and the play testers will be the best judges of what is going to create the game that you and they want to play and that you and they enjoy, however some outside input is always useful. Just remember that you and your play testers have the experience of actually playing the game and therefore have more insight.
That said, here is my tupence on your question.
Decide what is most important to you, the feel of the game for example, or how well it models the real human experiance, a balance of the two or other factors. Then think about what will beshelp you achieve that.
Realistically speaking some human attributes can and do change over a life time and some are easier to change than others. Using an anecdotal experience, as a child I was relatively weak for my considerable size ( still stronger than many boys my age, but weaker than those my physical size). I was also quite clumsy, not terrifically so, but certainly less well co-ordinated than most people I know.
I took up fencing as a sport, primarily because it looked like something that I would enjoy. As a result my balance, stamina and agility all improved a very great deal. My reactions even more so. I am now very agile and have reaction speeds that literally cause people to look on in shock. This is a massive increase over where I started out but it took years of training and dedication. Relating this to your stat system, my agility and reactions certainly have increased by more than one step and are now amongst the highest of anyone I've met (including a lot of other sports fencers).
Strength is another one that people often increase greatly over the course of their lives, there is whole industry dedicated to increasing ones strength and stamina and there are numerous body builders and weight lifters who started off life an awful lot weaker than they later became.
Using myself as an example, I am now considerably stronger than I was when younger, this has developed as a result of my day job which is much more physical than you would expect it to be. I am no longer weaker than some one of my size may be expected to be, I am quite strong but, relating to your stat system I would say an increase of probably 1 step? Possibly 2 (but I think more like 1).
Other attributes are far harder to increase over time. I noticed you mentioned Willpower as an attribute I may be wrong but I feel that is something that is very hard to increase greatly over time. Certainly people do it, but it is a long and hard road and a limit of a 1 step increase such as the one you have seems realistic to me.
However, it is worth asking yourself and your play testers, “Would modelling this make the rules more ‘clunky’ than you want them to be/” After all, introducing rules where some stats can be increased more often over the course of your life than others may model reality more closely but would make the rules a little more unwieldy. Is that worth it? That is a question you need to decide for yourself. The next question you may like to consider should probably be “would making this change ruin the flavour and feel that you are trying to achieve, and if so would the new flavour and feel be something that you still enjoy to the same extent?”
I hope something in all of that is of some use or help to you.
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