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A Wilder World: The Joy of Numbers
Jun. 7th, 2012 01:23 pm(Warning: System nerdery ahead. If you don't care about the nitty-gritty details of a game system beyond "Big numbers good", this post might bore you to tears. If you like to know the odds and see some of the thought that goes into things like how a game uses random numbers, though, this post might be for you.)
The stat system for A Wilder World uses a dozen different attributes called Character Strengths (abbreviated as CS). They are Brawn, Endurance, Agility, Dexterity, Sight, Hearing, Mind, Knowledge, Persuasion, Dominance*, Deception, and Stealth.
For starting characters, these attributes range from -2 to to 6. The number measures notable differences above or below the expected norm, so the "average" person will have 0 on everything. This doesn't mean that most people in the world would be ranked from -2 to 2 and thus average out to zero... if a character record sheet existed for the whole world, the most common score would be 0.
The sort of people who feature as heroes of epic stories aren't average, of course, but even the "average" Player Character is likely to have some 0s on their sheet. Being a hero means you stand above the crowd, it doesn't mean you are great at everything.
Character Strengths are relative and abstract. Brawn of +2 doesn't mean you can lift and carry 2x pounds, it means you are appreciably stronger than anyone with a Brawn of +1 or lower and appreciably less strong than anyone with a Brawn of +3 or higher.
Figuring out if you can pick up a boulder and use it to wedge a narrow tunnel entrance shut isn't a matter of figuring out the weight of the boulder compared to your Brawn. If you make the necessary roll, it was light enough for you to move. You were strong enough to move it.
What your score in a Character Strength does is it adds to the roll (of a single standard six-sided die) when you're making a check. Pick a lock? Dexterity Check. Roll die, add Dexterity. Break the lock or bash down the door? Brawn Check. Roll die, add Brawn. The target number for the check varies based on difficulty, but the "magic number" is 7... an ordinary obstacle will usually have a target number around 7.
Let's use the example of a typical lock. An ordinary person, without any noticeable gift in the area of Brawn or Dexterity, can't walk up to a lock and blithely circumvent it. There is no chance. 1d6 + 0 = 6 at the most.
Someone with a slight advantage in such an area (+1 CS) has a small but appreciable chance, 1 in 6. Someone with what we might consider to be seriously gifted (+3) has a 50/50 chance of being able to walk up to a lock door and break it open or spring the lock with a little effort. Someone with truly superhuman/legendary abilities (+6) can just walk up and twist the knob off or seemingly spring the lock with a touch, because they can't fail... 1d6+6 = 7 at the lowest.
You can't re-roll a check, so if you fail the first time that means this lock or door or obstacle or whatever is beyond your ability to immediately overcome... but if time isn't pressing, you can add +1, +2, or +3 to the roll based on how long you are willing and able to spend on the task. So when time's not pressing, failing by 3 or less can also be read as "succeeded, eventually."
If the average person doesn't care who hears them and there's no one around to see (no penalties for stealth) and has all the time in the world (maximum +3 to the check for taking extra time), that puts them in the 50/50 range for foiling the locked door, and the gifted person enters the same territory as the legendary one: automatic success, if they're free to take their time.
You can see how people with different scores in a given Character Strength are playing on different levels from each other. A score of 6 allows you to instantly and automatically succeed on a task that would be difficult for a score of 0 to achieve even at length. The gap widens when you add in exceptional rolls, the "critical success" mechanic for A Wilder World. I'm not going to get into the nuts and bolts here, but they're more likely and more effective the higher your score is, with a dramatic upswing with each point above 3 you have in a CS.
Basically, a CS of 1 to 3 is meant to represent the whole normal expected range of superior human ability, with 4 being the very rare gift that seems to transcend human limitations, 5 verging on magic, and 6 being the kind of thing that makes a certain kind of person say "Bull! There's just no way a human being could do that." and stop reading/watching (or not, but then complain the whole time about how unbelievable it is).
You assign your CS by spending a pool of points during character creation. Scores from 1 to 3 cost points on a 1:1 basis. The cost goes up for scores of 4 or above. The number of points you have to spend and the exact way it escalates is pending some playing around on my part and playtesting, but I'm considering somewhere around 20 to 25 points and each point higher than 3 costs double.
You can get extra points to spend elsewhere by taking Character Strengths negative, but there are strict limits on it: no score lower than -2, you can't have more than four negative points total, and the exchange rate for a very high score is unfavorable. So if you have a negative score somewhere, it's more likely to be because that fits your image of your character than because it helped you min/max.
Magic and Wealth are two scores that will work a little bit differently than the main CSes, but come out of the same pool of points. Again, details pend experimentation, but Magic in particular will probably cost twice as much and be capped at 3... making competency in Magic more expensive and capping it off will help mitigate the need to pile disadvantages on it to make up for the fact that it can be used in place of just about everything.
*Dominance might be renamed, if a more suitable name appears. It's the counterpart to Persuasion, the "hard sell" to Persuasion's "soft touch". Approaches that rely on intimidation, coercion, browbeating, raw invocations of authority, or sheer force of will use Dominance. The advantage of Dominance is that it can be used in situations where Persuasion is not applicable, like when dealing with enemies or people who don't trust you at all. The drawback is that it tends to leave people less kindly disposed to you, where successful Persuasion does the opposite.
Unfortunately, most words we have for persuasiveness have a more positive connotation: charisma, charm, etc. I almost went with "Presence", as one can have a commanding presence or intimidating presence, but "Dominance" does a better job of conveying with a single word what this CS does.
Update: The alternate name "Command" has been submitted and I'm seriously considering it as an alternative to Dominance.
The stat system for A Wilder World uses a dozen different attributes called Character Strengths (abbreviated as CS). They are Brawn, Endurance, Agility, Dexterity, Sight, Hearing, Mind, Knowledge, Persuasion, Dominance*, Deception, and Stealth.
For starting characters, these attributes range from -2 to to 6. The number measures notable differences above or below the expected norm, so the "average" person will have 0 on everything. This doesn't mean that most people in the world would be ranked from -2 to 2 and thus average out to zero... if a character record sheet existed for the whole world, the most common score would be 0.
The sort of people who feature as heroes of epic stories aren't average, of course, but even the "average" Player Character is likely to have some 0s on their sheet. Being a hero means you stand above the crowd, it doesn't mean you are great at everything.
Character Strengths are relative and abstract. Brawn of +2 doesn't mean you can lift and carry 2x pounds, it means you are appreciably stronger than anyone with a Brawn of +1 or lower and appreciably less strong than anyone with a Brawn of +3 or higher.
Figuring out if you can pick up a boulder and use it to wedge a narrow tunnel entrance shut isn't a matter of figuring out the weight of the boulder compared to your Brawn. If you make the necessary roll, it was light enough for you to move. You were strong enough to move it.
What your score in a Character Strength does is it adds to the roll (of a single standard six-sided die) when you're making a check. Pick a lock? Dexterity Check. Roll die, add Dexterity. Break the lock or bash down the door? Brawn Check. Roll die, add Brawn. The target number for the check varies based on difficulty, but the "magic number" is 7... an ordinary obstacle will usually have a target number around 7.
Let's use the example of a typical lock. An ordinary person, without any noticeable gift in the area of Brawn or Dexterity, can't walk up to a lock and blithely circumvent it. There is no chance. 1d6 + 0 = 6 at the most.
Someone with a slight advantage in such an area (+1 CS) has a small but appreciable chance, 1 in 6. Someone with what we might consider to be seriously gifted (+3) has a 50/50 chance of being able to walk up to a lock door and break it open or spring the lock with a little effort. Someone with truly superhuman/legendary abilities (+6) can just walk up and twist the knob off or seemingly spring the lock with a touch, because they can't fail... 1d6+6 = 7 at the lowest.
You can't re-roll a check, so if you fail the first time that means this lock or door or obstacle or whatever is beyond your ability to immediately overcome... but if time isn't pressing, you can add +1, +2, or +3 to the roll based on how long you are willing and able to spend on the task. So when time's not pressing, failing by 3 or less can also be read as "succeeded, eventually."
If the average person doesn't care who hears them and there's no one around to see (no penalties for stealth) and has all the time in the world (maximum +3 to the check for taking extra time), that puts them in the 50/50 range for foiling the locked door, and the gifted person enters the same territory as the legendary one: automatic success, if they're free to take their time.
You can see how people with different scores in a given Character Strength are playing on different levels from each other. A score of 6 allows you to instantly and automatically succeed on a task that would be difficult for a score of 0 to achieve even at length. The gap widens when you add in exceptional rolls, the "critical success" mechanic for A Wilder World. I'm not going to get into the nuts and bolts here, but they're more likely and more effective the higher your score is, with a dramatic upswing with each point above 3 you have in a CS.
Basically, a CS of 1 to 3 is meant to represent the whole normal expected range of superior human ability, with 4 being the very rare gift that seems to transcend human limitations, 5 verging on magic, and 6 being the kind of thing that makes a certain kind of person say "Bull! There's just no way a human being could do that." and stop reading/watching (or not, but then complain the whole time about how unbelievable it is).
You assign your CS by spending a pool of points during character creation. Scores from 1 to 3 cost points on a 1:1 basis. The cost goes up for scores of 4 or above. The number of points you have to spend and the exact way it escalates is pending some playing around on my part and playtesting, but I'm considering somewhere around 20 to 25 points and each point higher than 3 costs double.
You can get extra points to spend elsewhere by taking Character Strengths negative, but there are strict limits on it: no score lower than -2, you can't have more than four negative points total, and the exchange rate for a very high score is unfavorable. So if you have a negative score somewhere, it's more likely to be because that fits your image of your character than because it helped you min/max.
Magic and Wealth are two scores that will work a little bit differently than the main CSes, but come out of the same pool of points. Again, details pend experimentation, but Magic in particular will probably cost twice as much and be capped at 3... making competency in Magic more expensive and capping it off will help mitigate the need to pile disadvantages on it to make up for the fact that it can be used in place of just about everything.
*Dominance might be renamed, if a more suitable name appears. It's the counterpart to Persuasion, the "hard sell" to Persuasion's "soft touch". Approaches that rely on intimidation, coercion, browbeating, raw invocations of authority, or sheer force of will use Dominance. The advantage of Dominance is that it can be used in situations where Persuasion is not applicable, like when dealing with enemies or people who don't trust you at all. The drawback is that it tends to leave people less kindly disposed to you, where successful Persuasion does the opposite.
Unfortunately, most words we have for persuasiveness have a more positive connotation: charisma, charm, etc. I almost went with "Presence", as one can have a commanding presence or intimidating presence, but "Dominance" does a better job of conveying with a single word what this CS does.
Update: The alternate name "Command" has been submitted and I'm seriously considering it as an alternative to Dominance.