Monday, August 1, 2011

System Wank - Attributes

The next in my "System Wank" series, in which I highlight mechanics in various games that I've really liked.  Today, I want to point out one of the better collections of character attributes I've played with.  I point you to: The New World of Darkness!

For those few of you not aware, World of Darkness is the core system for White Wolf's stable of games, including Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, and Mage: The Awakening.  It is called New World of Darkness, or nWoD, because it is a new revision of the system that was used for Vampire: The Masquerade and related games.

As a note, I do not like the nWoD system.  I find it to be a muddled mess that relies entirely too much on GM hand-waving and adherence to the spirit of the rules.  That may be at least partially because I was introduced to the system through LARP, and only used it for that.  As a second note, I am one of the rare gamers who played religiously through the 90s but never once picked up Vampire.  I know a little of the mythology from listening to various anecdotes, but never interacted with the system at all.

That said, I do happen to really love the set of attributes that nWoD uses to stat out the characters.  As anyone who has toyed with game design knows, trying to narrow down the fundamental measures of a person's capabilities while steering clearing of the classic six of D&D is not easy.  The designers at White Wolf took a couple steps to the left, and came up with a really neat and balanced array.

There are three families of attributes: mental, physical, and social.  Each family has three types of attributes: power, finesse, and resistance.  So, Stamina is physical resistance, whereas Intelligence is mental power.  It is very clean, very symmetrical, and fairly clear as to which stat should be called for in any given situation. 

I do have three minor issues with the system.  First, for most of my purposes, I find nine attributes to be too many.  I've toyed with ways to compress it into a smaller number, but it inevitably fails to work.  That is mostly a matter of it being a little less than perfectly elegant, rather than a true flaw.

The second is a bit more severe.  I have real difficulty understanding the difference between mental resistance, Resolve, and social resistance, Composure.  Resolve measures your ability to concentrate and ignore distractions.  Composure measures your ability to keep your cool when flustered or insulted.  It's a fine line.  Uses of Composure are fairly obvious, as opponents frequently launch social "attacks" against you.  Uses of Resolve are a bit harder to come by, as it is a rare opponent that launches an intellectual attack.  Within the system, Resolve is primarily used to resist magical manipulation.  This is excellent, unless you are attempting to port the attributes to a setting where psychic assault is very rare.

The third is my biggest dissatisfaction.  There is no attribute for awareness or perception.  This is partially my own personal issue, as I simply see perception as an inborn talent rather than a trained skill.  I've toyed with two different solutions to this.  I could replace Resolve with Perception, arguing that noticing details allows you to avoid intellectual traps.  That seems very forced and unsatisfying.  I could actually add a fourth type of attribute to each family for awareness.  So, physical awareness could be Senses, social awareness could be Empathy, and mental awareness could be, um, something.  You see the stumbling block there (in addition to exacerbating my previous issue of there being too many attributes).

Even with these issues, though, I still consider the nWoD attribute matrix to be the standard I measure all others by.

12 comments:

  1. When I've added the fourth category "Awareness"

    Physical - Spatial Awareness - where are things in position to each other.

    Mental - How do things interconnect - the state for figuring out how things work.

    Social - How do interactions/people work.

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  2. Can you elaborate on the difference between Mental Awareness and Mental Finesse there? Both would seem to be serving much the same purpose.

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  3. Mental Power - AKA Intelligence - How effective is your solution. Brute force is effective but not elegant.

    Mental Finesse - AKA Wits - How artistic is your solution, how much will people marvel at the solution as being elegant. Your answer may be very elegant and efficient, but not sufficient.

    Mental Resolve - AKA Resolve - How long you are willing to struggle with the problem. Your solution may be elegant, and be sufficient, but do you have the focus to finish the answer?

    Mental Awareness - AKA ????? (Not convenient to look at what I called this) - How aware of you of how the problem is interconnected within itself.

    The trick is that remembering that Awareness rolls are rarely an end in and of themselves - they generally set-up the difficulty or ease of the follow-up solution.

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  4. DC Heroes is the first game I can think of that had the 3x3 paradigm of attributes. Being a supers game, it had plenty of powers that targeted the different families.

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  5. @BeZurKur - Ah. As I have never been drawn to the DC universe, I never looked at that game. Duly noted.

    @Arashi - What is the point of gaining an elegant solution, other than being marveled at?

    It looks like you use Awareness to modify the difficulty of the subsequent task. That's a very interesting take on the problem. Not entirely sure I like it, as I do prefer Awareness to be an end in itself (e.g., noticing an odd odor, knowing that someone is lying).

    My take on the Mental stats has always been:

    Intelligence - Knowledge is power. This measures how much information you keep in your brain, and how easily you can bring it to bear on a problem. Uses: memorizing a map, recalling the weakness of a creature, remembering the phone number of your Congressman.

    Wits - No knot unties itself. This measures how good you are at solving puzzles, figuring out how things work, and using existing information to deduce new information. Uses: figuring out who the murderer really is, fixing the office copier, developing a new retrovirus.

    Resolve - Focus. This measures how good you are at staying on task and avoiding distraction. Uses: staying alert on stakeout, completing a massive research project, resisting magical influence.

    Awareness - ????. Noticing patterns is part of Wits. Remembering details is part of Intelligence. Noticing details is generally part of the physical awareness. Self awareness is generally part of Resolve. I'm really not at all sure what this would do.

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  6. Because occasionally finesse is needed when straight power won't do. I can blow up a safe to get at what's inside, or I can finesse the lock so that no one knows that I did it that way.

    I also use it for speed of thought - quick on the mental feet.

    ---
    But it isn't an end in and of itself, it is almost entirely passive in its effect of exerting change on the world.

    If you notice a scent, then what? You notice a scent - there's no change in the world, just your understanding of it - which may make it easier to disable the explosive, give a clue(bonus) to figuring out who was in the room last, etc.

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  7. Here, what about this?

    Intelligence and Resolve remain unchanged. If we go with Wits as mental finesse, we might consider it combining and synergizing the information--tracking the facts we have together and forward to come to a solution or rationalize what we have, whether they're the right facts or not.

    Our Mental Awareness--let's call it Reflection, for now--might be used to sort through the facts we have, determining whether new ones are relevant, removing ones that aren't or noting when some are just plain incongruous. For instance, a good Reflection roll might tell us that it's really weird for someone as buddy-buddy with demons as our current antagonist appears to be to be stealing the local equivalent of Demonology for Dummies, but not tell us why it's weird--that's for the other attributes to figure out.

    Re reasons to have elegant designs: otherwise, we have to deal with a bunch of messy exceptions, rather than just making sure everything works the same way. Just look at what we're doing right now! The system's got an effective model, but is it an elegant one? If it were, I don't imagine we'd be going back and forth this much.

    (Though given that I come at this having only played in those White-Wolf systems where Perception and Appearance are Attributes, mental/social resistance is either Something Else Entirely or an Ability, and the usual explanation for Wits vs. Int is how fast you think versus how well, I may not have the best of angles.)

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  8. I think that's definitely splitting hairs between what Wits and Reflection (nice name, btw) do. Also, I think that it would be tricky as a GM to build scenarios in such a way as to consistently reward a high Reflection. I'm also trying to think how Reflection would end up working with the various skills in this way. Wits + Mechanics lets you fix or invent things, while Wits + Larceny lets you figure out where the weak spots in a heist target are. What skills naturally pair with Reflection, or how would Reflection be used with various skills?

    I think you misunderstood my question on elegant solutions. I wasn't talking about elegant game design, which is a worthy goal. Rather, Arashi's definition of Wits had it determine the elegance of the successful skill check, and I wasn't sure what the value there was. With his subsequent explanation, I think I understand.

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  9. I've become a huge fan of Fate's maneuvers and would have the Awareness stat be the go-to stat for a lot maneuvers to put limitations on someone.

    So upon Reflection (ditto on the name) - I receive information from the DM that informs future actions; or upon Reflection I make declarative statements.

    Regarding elegant game design - I think Ravyn is being cutesy - we're all fairly intelligent people capable of coming up with something that works, now the question is whether we can roll well enough on our Wits + Game Design to make something that works elegantly. :)

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  10. If Reflection allows you to receive/discover or declare information, what does Intelligence do?

    (Note, I'm not trying to be difficult here. These are problems that I've chased around in my own head for years now.)

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  11. Direct answer:

    Create new solutions; power through some problem; create answers.

    I wouldn't let some Reflect to discover a new mathematical formula; but I would probably let them build up bonuses for the end roll.

    I liken to how Thaumaturgy is handled in Dresden Files - the final roll is very tough (and would use either Finesse or Power to solve); however, you can use Awareness, as well as other stats/skills to give you bonuses to make that end roll easier.

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  12. OK, let's take a specific example. You are Lex Luthor, and you're trying to figure out Superman's secret identity. As Lex, you have a 5 in all four mental attributes. You also have some dots in Lore: Superheroes and Research. You've been fighting this guy for a few years now, so you're pretty darn familiar with his routines, physical traits, and associates.

    How do you use Intelligence, Wits, and Reflection to solve the problem? And are those uses sufficiently different to warrant separate attributes?

    What would someone with 2 Intelligence, 2 Wits, but 5 Reflection be like? What about 5 Intelligence but 2 Reflection?

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