Crawler TTRPG Devlog 4 - On Attributes

previous post >here<

G'day denizens!

it's another devlog about numbers? from the mathematically illiterate.

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On a vibes only level, Attributes offer a way for the player to conceptualise what their PC is.

Vitals do the same for how.

and Skills are there to flesh out their capabilities.

NOTE: ofc Attributes and Skills could be rolled into one like in Mouseguard, or dropped entirely, like in Heart. This allows much more player freedom in defining who their PC is beyond the character sheet.

but Crawler has both, because numbers provide constraints which can lead to unexpected PCs for the player, at least that's the goal.

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So what attributes do we choose for our mildly cyberpunky system?

Some common ones can be ignored. i personally never liked wisdom or intelligence as stats for tabletop. In a CRPG like Arcanum it's not so difficult to RP an unwise idiot, since your dialogue options are predetermined, but there are some players who can feel handicapped trying to RP a very low int character. And with regards to wisdom, it's even worse. Should an unwise character RP generally make bad decisions? What if the player feels they solved a riddle, but what about their mentally challenged PC? The inverse is also true, very High int or wisdom PCs are usually significantly 'smarter'in the context of their worlds than the player, so how does that player make decisions that their PC would without that level of knowledge or foresight themselves?

All that before acknowledging the very reductive concept of being able to measure general 'intelligence' or 'wisdom' on a linear scale.

So... wer not gonna do that.

Instead, attributes are based around more general concepts. The starting point was stealing Disco Elysium's Motorics attribute, a more interesting concept than agility. I like things that promote discussion at the table for how they would be applicable.

and so the final list is:

• PHYS - Physique (the state of one's body)
• MOTO - Motorics (their ability to move the body)
• INTR - Interfacing (ability to interact with the world and people)
• AWRE - Awareness (ability to notice the world and people)
• WILL - Willpower (ability to withstand the world and people)
• CHRM - Charm (ability to affect others)

(i keep thinking Charm should be called Presence instead but the abbreviations make it easy to confuse with physique)

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The original, terrible, idea was to then have skills derive from a combination of these stats:
e.g. Bullshit base skill = (CHRM+AWRE)/2

but. With over 15 skills (i'll get to them in a later post), this makes character creation a big pain in the ass without an app. i considered making an app that precalculates everything, like CoC7e's fancy PDF character sheet, but then remembered that this is just more friction and makes the game less accessible.

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In reworking the numbers following the change in dice system i talked about in the previous post, i had to rejigger the way the stats are generated. Previous system was also, unsurprisingly, overdesigned and clunky:
(attribute = 3d6/3 rounded up, min 1 max 7, (disgusting)).

now attribute = 1d10/2 rounded up (result of 0 = 1)

or

you can roll on a table to get a distribution. Lower numbers give a narrow spread e.g. [5,5,2,1,1,1] and higher numbers give a flat spread [3,3,3,2,2,2]

or

Distribute 15 points however you like! (min 1 max 5 per attribute)

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There are still some things to consider that will perhaps affect the Attributes that i keep going back and forth on,

• do occupations grant stat bonuses, and if so, can you get over 5?
• How does levelling work, or is that even a mechanic?
• are any of the stats derived from attributes?
• Characters don't have a Health stat, but perhaps there are any mechanics that could be affected by attributes direclty? WILL is a good candidate for this, e.g. it is used to ignore penalties caused by injuries, but what else?

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Having written all this, i realise that i should probably explain how the character sheet works before continuing talking more about stats or anything like that...

as always, any feedback or discussion is genuinely appreciated!

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so thanks for reading this slightly context-less infodump? you're pretty cool if you did so.

may life be kind to you all : )

sumfool signing off