Stats (Part 1): Narrowing the Scope

Character stats are supposed to represent how 'naturally good' your character is at something, and are usually used to add generic bonuses to a wide variety of actions.  But natural talent can be either very broad or very specific.  So stats are a difficult RPG mechanic to get 'right'.

For example, if I want to be a 'strong' character, a good stat for me would be 'strength'.  Strength then gives me a bonus to all of the things I would need muscle for: throwing rocks, or running really fast.  But having muscle in one's arms isn't the same as having muscle in one's legs.  So do we need two different stats, one for arms and one for legs?  If I choose legs, am I both good at jumping and good at running?  These are separate muscle groups, so do we need even more stats to represent this?

You could almost endlessly break down stats into more and more specific categories, so let's instead try to sum them up.  Strength and agility, for example, could both be represented with 'body'.  Both charisma and intelligence could be represented with 'mind'. Combine body and mind, and eventually we're left with a single stat: 'goodness'.

Both extremes do not make for a good game.  Too much, and it's too complicated.  Too little, and there's not enough depth to be interesting.  Finding that perfect balance is the challenge for any good RPG.

We need stats because we want to represent a character with a quick glance at a few numbers.  It allows us to envision a 'first impression' for appearance and personality without needed to dig deeper into the character's build.   In addition, it removes the need for "synergy" bonuses between skills (e.g. I'm athletic, so I'm naturally a little bit better at swimming, climbing, and running than the average person).   Stats are a commonly used idea, and it might seem 'different' to try to make a game without them, but they are a fantastic building block both in terms of character development and actual game mechanics.

Finding the right stats for any game comes down to mechanics and feel.  Unfortunately, mechanics is a chicken-egg problem, because in order to make good mechanics, we need at least an idea of the stats we're going to use.  So I've found it best to start with feel, and iterate as much as possible until satisfied with the result.

For Hostargo, I wanted to create a simplistic base system.  That means less is more, so I started with just body and mind.  I feel like these are good stats, since they fully represent two very distinct parts of being 'alive'.   But I wanted a little bit more depth than that.  Some of my favorite systems use 4 stats: body => strength & agility, and mind => intelligence & charisma.   Unfortunately, I have to pick on charisma (there may be a whole other blog post on why).  I want to spread it out, because in my opinion both might and intelligence can make your more intimidating, something usually put under this awkward charisma stat.

Just ripping it out leaves me with three stats: strength, agility, and intelligence.  I don't like this spread anymore, however, since it's bias towards mental attributes.  To be a good 'body' character, I have to increase two stats, where as a 'mind' character only has to increase one.

At this point I'm ready to jump over and look at my mechanics to see if I can come up with some clues as to where to go from here.  That jump will be continued in my next blog post!  Thanks for reading, and hopefully you'll follow up with me next time.