Two years ago I joined the boards, and started posting part of my own little action movie RPG. This is the system I'll be using to run Dead Man's Land, The Infinity Files, Guns in The Outlaw, and Storm Knights (my revision of Torg).

Those posts trailed off, as I needed to concentrate on other things, but development and playtesting has continued, as time and circumstances allow. With the arrival of the New Year, I thought I'd dive back in and post the latest revision of the rules.

If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to toss them in. I may not change anything, but I do listen.

Before I begin, I just want to say thanks to the following people (in no particular order):

My playtesters: John McGlynn, Thomas Stevens, Bryan Jones, Glen Taylor, and Dustin Reindl.

Commentary and Feedback: "winston inabox", John McGlynn, Phil Dack, Chad Dickhaut, Dominick Riesland, Thomas Stevens, Bryan Bradbury, Jake Linford, Ron Lundeen, "The Traveller", "Ladybird", "Silverlion", Ks. Jim Ogle, "Chaosvoyager", Salvador A. Melo, "davidov", Glen Taylor, Tommy Tanaka, "Bloody Stupid Johnson", Dustin Reindl, and the Torg List.

My " 'No' Men": "winston inabox", John McGlynn, and Glen Taylor. Powerful people are surrounded by Yes Men, who tell them every utterance is solid gold. I'm fortunate to have found a few No Men, people who read and comment on my stuff, and tell me I'm wrong. My game has been much improved thereby.

Much thanks to everyone.

I want to begin these posts with a tiny smidgen of game design theory. My belief is that most people play RPG's to have an enjoyable time controlling imaginary characters in an imaginary world. Most people play for immersion: they want the world to "come alive" for them.

Immersion happens in the minds of the players and GM, when they use their imaginations to see the world. And that is facilitated by GM descriptions of the world and player descriptions of what their character is doing and thinking.

The central mechanic of the game is the Skill Challenge: characters using skills to do things in the world. Nearly everything in the game is built around this mechanic. And this mechanic is built around immersion, in three different ways:

• The mechanics encourage GM's to describe the world vividly, by making it easy for them to describe both the difficulty of a Challenge and the outcome of a Challenge. (Without going overboard.) The mechanics encourage, but don't mandate this.

• The mechanics also make it easy for players to understand the difficulty of a Challenge and the Skill/Attribute Rating of their characters in relatable, real world terms. This makes the game world more tangible — their own experiences allow them to better understand the world of the game, which makes the game world seem more real.

• The mechanics encourage players to describe their character's actions in vivid terms. By depicting what their characters do, it helps the GM and other players imagine the world.

I'm not claiming that I've suddenly fixed roleplaying, because everyone else got it wrong for 40 years. I'm not claiming this is the one, perfect approach to gaming. But it seems like a great approach for an action-movie game.

Action movies are about heroes doing great things: jumping off a rooftop as it explodes behind them, defusing a bomb on a crowded airplane, shooting at hordes of bad guys in a burning refinery. Action movies revolve around action, and action is more exciting when it is described in colorful terms. The mechanics of the game encourage this, in players and GM's.

The goal of the game is to encourage vivid descriptions, and get out of the way. As I post the mechanics, I'll try and show how I've worked towards these goals.

Players interact with the world through their characters. Most play "in-character", making those choices their character would make.

The better they understand their character, in real world, relatable terms, the more real the character will seem to them and the better they can gauge what he's capable of.

I'll start with Skill Ratings. Skill Ratings measure how good a character is at something. The higher, the better.

Skill Ratings

2-4 is a Novice, a raw recruit or an inexperienced beginner. Part-time employees, like the teen who flips burgers at a fast food joint, are Novices, as are interns.

5-9 is Skilled, someone employable in a field at an entry level. Telemarketers and Tech Support employees are typically Skilled, as are people just graduating college with a Bachelor's degree.

10-14 is a Professional, possessing a post-graduate degree or equivalent in on-the-job experience. Your general physician is a Professional, as are the vast majority of movie sergeants.

15-19 is Accomplished, a standout in the field, cited and respected by their peers, but typically unknown to the general public. Writers of specialized books (such as textbooks or reference works) are usually Accomplished.

20-24 is World Class, one of the best in the world. (As the name implies.) Olympic athletes, for example.

25-29 is a Grand Master, “The Best There is at What I Do”. Grand Masters are luminaries in their field. Physicist Stephen Hawking, as a real-world example.

30+ is Legendary, one of the best who’s ever lived. Legendary figures are those who dominate history. Their works live on long after they die and their names become synonymous with their field of expertise. Shakespeare, Robin Hood, Einstein: these are all Legendary figures.

Design

These are named and described in the most direct, most obvious language I could write. They are intended to be immediately understood by just about anyone. We all know novices, we all know professionals, we've all seen world-class athletes, we all know how accomplished Einstein and Robin Hood were in their fields.

We know what people like that are, and using the above chart, we know how our characters compare. This also makes it easier to translate fictional characters or real-world people into game mechanical terms.

Batman is the World's Greatest Detective. On the above scale, he'd be a 28, 29, or maybe 30 in the appropriate skills. Robin Hood is famed for being the best archer in history. 30, or higher.

Immediate. Direct. Obvious. (To the maximum extent practical.)

This is the design theory of the game.

Challenges

Challenges are the bread-and-butter of the system. When a character attempts something significant, their Skill Rating (modified by a die roll) is compared to the Challenge Rating, a numerical representation of how difficult a task is. Gamemasters pick the appropriate Challenge Ratings (from 0 to 30 or higher), based on the following table:

CR 0 - Routine: "Didn't even think about it." A task so easy, you barely notice performing it. Teaching these takes a second or two. Even rank amateurs and raw recruits usually succeed at Routine tasks. Ex: Turning on a computer. Unlocking a car door. Using a fork.

CR 5 - Easy: "That seems pretty easy." A relatively simple task, something amateurs find too complex, and entry-level workers find challenging, but competent professionals almost always succeed at. Ex.: Taking off or landing an airplane in clear weather. Diagnosing a common disease. Swimming a mile.

CR 8 - Moderate: "That's complicated." This sort of task is the bread-and-butter of veterans (who usually succeed), but the untried and inexperienced find them daunting. Ex.: A reporter writing a newspaper column or story.

CR 10 - Difficult: "This isn't a job for greenies." Veterans often succeed at these sorts of tasks, and standout members of a profession nearly always succeed, but entry level employees usually fail.

CR 15 - Formidable: "We need a specialist." Something seasoned characters struggle to achieve, but luminaries usually succeed at.

CR 20 - Grueling: "Only 6 people in the world understand this theory." A task one of the best in the world fails at, more often than not.

CR 25 - Monumental: "There's only one man for the job." Tasks the foremost expert fails at most times.

CR 30 - Nearly Impossible: "No one could make that shot." Even a DaVinci or Napoleon finds these tasks difficult, failing more than half the time.

Application

Each skill will have a chart of appropriate CR's for that skill. Adverse or helpful conditions can modify those numbers. Utter darkness might impose a -10 penalty on attacks, for example.

Ideally, after a while the GM should be able to set CR's on the fly, without reference to the charts. The player describes what they want to do, the GM judges how difficult it is and sets the CR. The point is ease of use and speed of play, not exactly hewing to a chart. (The same applies to situational penalties. Pick a modifier and go.)

Some GM's are more comfortable with the charts, and find them faster than picking a number. "Go with that", is what I say. "Play the way you want to play." That's another of my design mottos.

Design/Development

I have two goals for my mechanics: that they be relatable or describable. As with Skill Ratings, Challenge ratings are intended to be immediate and visceral. People should be able to read the description and understand what it means, either because they've faced such a challenge in their life or they can imagine such a thing.

I want these descriptions to be as immediately understandable as the Skill Ratings chart, being described in relatable terms people can associate with things they've experienced in the real world. Right now they're okay, but not great.

As I finish skill descriptions, and in particular the Sample CR's with each skill, I'll be working those issues out. It'll get better.

The design goals seem fine (nothing I could argue with there). I'm wondering if the number scale you've chosen (0-30) isn't the easiest scale to grasp intuitively though (unlike say d% or 1-10).
Seems like the player just has to remember that 10= difficult, 20 = grueling/ 10 is professional, 20 is world class to make sense of it. Wondering if you shouldn't be using the same adjective ladder for both ability and difficulty, for simplicity's sake (a la FUDGE/FATE).

Success Rating

Challenges are tests of a character’s abilities, they represent the character attempting to do something. "I want to search for the Cardinal's letter." "I want to repair the car's engine." "I want to shoot at the griffin with my bow."

The third critical component of Challenges (after the Skill Rating and Challenge Rating) is Success Rating. To get this, you roll the dice, which gives you a number from -9 to +9. You add this roll to your Skill Rating.

Skill 10, roll 0 = 10
Skill 10, roll -3 = 7
Skill 13, roll -3 = 10

That's your total. Compare this to your Challenge Rating to get a result.

Total 10, CR 5 = result 5.
Total 5, CR 5 = result 0.
Total 4, CR 5 = result -1.

In other words, total - CR = result.

What does this mean? Well, the higher your result, the better you did. The lower, the worse you did. We measure this with a Success Rating (SR).

To get SR, we count by 3's. A result of 3 or better is a Success Rating of 1. A result of 6 or better is 2 SR. A 9 or better is 3 SR. And so forth, on indefinitely.

(This can also be represented by "result divided by 3, round down". Or it can be represented in a table. Up to you.)

What about a result of less than 3? Any negative result (-1 or lower) is a Failure. You didn't do whatever you attempted.

A 0-2 is a Partial Success (O SR). You didn't succeed, but you haven't failed yet.

This is the core of the system. All other mechanics, all other mechanics, are built around Success Ratings. Once you understand how to generate Success Ratings, you know how to play.

Tomorrow I'll talk about how Success Ratings (and Failure) work with Skill Challenges.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;720830Seems like the player just has to remember that 10= difficult, 20 = grueling/ 10 is professional, 20 is world class to make sense of it.

Players don't have to remember the labels for the Challenge Rating scale. The names and descriptions are a tool for GM's to translate a situation into a Rating.

"That seems pretty easy." Set the CR to 5.

"That's definitely tough." Set the CR to 15.

"I don't see how anyone could do that." Set the CR to 25 or higher. And so forth.

In play, the GM just describes the situation, and gives the CR. Once players know the CR, they know how difficult it is to succeed.

"The engine has been shot at least twice, and the radiator is dripping fluid. With the tools you have, it's CR 15 to repair."

A player with skill 10 knows they need a +5 to succeed. That's pretty hard to do, they'll fail 85% of the time.

A character with skill 15 will succeed 54% of the time.

A character with skill 20 will succeed 88% of the time.

That's a swing from "you'll rarely do it" to "you'll usually do it".

That chance of success or failure is a concrete representation of how difficult a challenge is. Players understand that kind of thing innately.

They don't need to be told "it's Formidable, you'll probably fail". Set the CR right, and they'll know.

Describe the scene (so they know what's going on) and tell them the CR (or what the CR seems to be), so they know how likely it is they'll succeed. That's much more effective than an abstract term. (IMHO.)

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;720830I'm wondering if the number scale you've chosen (0-30) isn't the easiest scale to grasp intuitively though (unlike say d% or 1-10).

The Skill Rating scale is a direct result of other aspects of the system, such as attributes and training. I'll cover both of those later.

While it might not be a scale that most people are familiar with, it's fairly straightforward — start at 0, count by 5.

Also, you don't need to memorize it to play the game. During play, what you have are Ratings (the numbers themselves) and player/GM descriptions.

The Skill Rating scale is training wheels for players — it tells them what the numbers on their sheet mean. It's not something that needs to be referenced constantly.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;720830I'm wondering if the number scale you've chosen (0-30) isn't the easiest scale to grasp intuitively

There was a better answer to this. And here it is:

The mechanics implicitly assume that the Attribute and Skill scale is open ended. You can reflect many different kinds of weapons and conditions, from the toughness of a paper clip to the toughness of a planet. (Or star or galaxy or...) This lets me use the same scale to reflect the tou of a mouse (1), a human (10, on average), up to and including a planet (125 for Earth, IIRC).

Damage is rated on the same scale. An average man with a dagger does damage 14. An assault rifle does damage 20. A nuclear explosion does damage 60. And the main cannon of the Death Star does damage 140.

Skills apply directly to combat. The more skilled you are, and the better your attack, the more damage you do. The scale of the Skill Ratings and Challenge Ratings are designed to work alongside the damage and toughness scales.

This system makes superhero games easy to do: just give the characters higher attributes.

I'm sorry but I don't understand how the system especially follows from this:

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;719861And this mechanic is built around immersion, in three different ways:

• The mechanics encourage GM's to describe the world vividly, by making it easy for them to describe both the difficulty of a Challenge and the outcome of a Challenge. (Without going overboard.) The mechanics encourage, but don't mandate this.

• The mechanics also make it easy for players to understand the difficulty of a Challenge and the Skill/Attribute Rating of their characters in relatable, real world terms. This makes the game world more tangible — their own experiences allow them to better understand the world of the game, which makes the game world seem more real.

I don't see how its especially relateable, it just seems to do exactly what every other RPG does (GM gives you number).  Or we just have different ideas as to what sort of mechanics would help with immersion - currently I'm thinking for immersion, the scale gives the role-playing context of a number more than the mathematical context of what their success probability is. The question is something like "would get get more of a feeling your character is an expert shooter from having Firearms 4 dots in Storyteller, or Base Attack Bonus +8 in D20 Modern ?" The first has clearly defined scale in player ability, letting the player see how good they theoretically are, but the probability isn't easily calculable by most players; the second is mathematically transparent in its effect (+40%) but isn't as clear I think how the character relates to other characters.
Its probably a horrible can of worms that we could do on another thread rather than derailing your design thread, if its of interest.

TBH what I thought you were doing would be very hard to do, maybe I'm just misreading your prelude and getting overexcited. In any case I'm sure you do have reasons for choosing the numbers are scales you have which will be revealed in due course, maybe I should just let you carry on.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;721012it just seems to do exactly what every other RPG does (GM gives you number).

The mechanics aren't radically different from other RPG's, because I don't think RPG's need a revolution. I want to work with what people already do, not change how they play.

I prize immersion, and I think it chiefly comes from GM and player descriptions. Fortunately, most already do this. I just need to make sure I don't get in their way.

(And, in small, subtle ways, encourage it. And include some GM advice on how to maybe do it a little bit better.)

Obtrusive mechanics get in the way. Abstract or disassociated mechanics get in the way.

Make the mechanics as unobtrusive as practical, and make sure they relate to the real world in understandable ways. Do this, and the system gets out of the way.

That may seem simple, but there's a lot of games that get this wrong. I just want to make sure mine isn't one of them.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;721012I don't see how its especially relateable,

"15-19 is Accomplished, a standout in the field, cited and respected by their peers."

I think that's relatable — we all know people like that. I don't have to refer to my character as Accomplished all the time, for me to understand what a Skill Rating of 15 means. Doing so would seem (to me) to be obtrusive. It gets in the way of play.

"CR 20 - Grueling: 'Only 6 people in the world understand this theory.' A task one of the best in the world fails at, more often than not."

Again, I think this is relatable, for the exact same reasons. If you said to someone "The best programmers in the world would have a tough time at this", they'd certainly get an idea of how difficult it is.

Citing the CR number just makes that visceral in a way players can appreciate. "Does 2d10 damage." Most D&D players will immediately grasp how deadly a weapon that is. Same with the CR.

A good description of the task — "There are book piled everywhere, maybe a thousand or more. You have no idea where the one slim volume you need is." — just enhances that. The description makes it relatable.

I don't think people need to throw the adjectives around every single roll. They're training wheels, they show how the mechanics and the real world are related. Once players and GM's understand them, they don't need to refer back to them constantly.

The mechanics can be used as-is, and players and GM's can play the same way they always did (with maybe a little encouragement to be more evocative in their descriptions).

That's all I'm trying to do. Not reinvent the wheel (or make something completely different and claim its a wheel), just make the best damn wheel I can.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;721038Obtrusive mechanics get in the way. Abstract or disassociated mechanics get in the way.

Make the mechanics as unobtrusive as practical, and make sure they relate to the real world in understandable ways. Do this, and the system gets out of the way.

That may seem simple, but there's a lot of games that get this wrong. I just want to make sure mine isn't one of them.

OK, well that all makes sense.

Skill Challenges and Success Ratings

About half of the game (or a little bit more) will probably consist of Skill Challenges, depending on how combat-happy your players are. These use Success Ratings, from the prior post, in an easy to understand manner.

The worst result is Failure. You screwed the pooch.

0 SR is a Partial Success. This means "not quite there" or "you need to do more work". (i.e. attempt another Skill Challenge.)

1 SR means "you barely made it". (Success.)

2 SR means "you did it". (Solid Success.)

3 SR means "That was great!", doing so well that people are impressed. (Spectacular Success.)

These are chosen to be simple, clear, and straightforward. They are also relatable: Everyone knows what it's like to fail. Everyone knows what it's like to just squeak past, or to succeed, or to succeed so well others are impressed.

Partial successes represent those times when you need to take some more time on a project, longer than you thought. (Hence the additional Skill Challenge.) Again, everyone should have experienced this at one time or another.

Because these are relatable, they are easily describable. A character jumps a ravine. If the Fail, they fall. If they get a Partial Success, they don't quite make it, but can pull themselves up. (Or someone else can.)

Success means they barely made it, and the GM can describe them tottering on the edge of the abyss. Solid Success means they leap across, and Spectacular Success means they easily made it, and land with a fancy roll.

Descriptive feedback makes the world come alive, and the Success Rating is built so GM's can easily do so. The mechanics get out of the way.

The odds of these things occurring are also relatable. When your Skill Rating is equal to the Challenge Rating, a Spectacular Success happens about one percent of the time. Well, that makes sense — when something is a Challenge, truly impressive outcomes are rare.

Success ("barely made it") happens about a third of the time, Solid Successes about 10% of the time. You fail just over half the time (it's literally a challenge), and you have to put in extra work to succeed about a quarter of the time.

I'm not claiming those are scientifically exact percentages, but they are perfectly understandable. They make sense.

The goal, with Skill Challenges, is to tie Skill Ratings, Challenge Ratings, and Success Ratings to the real world, in relatable ways. Players understand what each means in concrete terms. This means GM's know what it is they're supposed to describe, which makes it easier to do so. (Hopefully encouraging it.)

With these rules, the game world will feel more real, and be described a little better. That is my hope, at least.

Don't Fuck It Up!

The previous posts covered the core mechanic of the game, as well as the thinking behind its design — why I made the choices I did. I have some very specific goals, which exist for specific reasons, and I've been writing mechanics that (hopefully) achieve them. As much as is practical, the rules should achieve the following goals:

Goal 1: Simple, direct, obvious. The mechanics should be easily understood, easily learned, and easy to use.

Easily learned mechanics are transparent in play. You can use them without thinking about them too much.

Goal 2: Mechanics should be related to the real world in concrete and plausible ways.

Mechanics that violate reality, that give nonsensical results, jar us out of the game and destroy immersion.

Goal 3: Mechanics should be easily describable; they should also encourage descriptions of the game world by players and GM's.

Concise and effective descriptions make the world come alive. They invite immersion.

You'll notice that, even if done correctly, none of the resulting mechanics directly create immersion. That's because immersion is a result of the interplay between player and GM.

I can't create it. I can only make rules that don't undermine it. (And give some advice that might help the GM and players.) My job, as the writer, is simple:

Don't fuck it up. People are already having fun at the table, just give them tools to do so, and get out of the way.

All three of these goals, if implemented well, aid immersion by getting the hell out of the way. (And by helping the GM and players make the game world feel vivid and true to life.) So, why do I think the core mechanic of the game meets these goals?

Goal 1: The mechanic is simple and clear.

Skill Total - Challenge Rating = Success Rating

That's easily understood, easily learned, and easy to use. (There's even three different methods for calculating Success Ratings — chart, math, count — for those who prefer different approaches.)

Goal 2: The mechanics model real phenomena in plausible ways that can be easily understood.

The Skill Ratings make sense. We all know of people (or characters) who match each of those descriptions. The mechanic matches reality.

The Challenge Ratings make sense. We can all understand how different tasks can fall into those categories. They match reality.

The Success Ratings make sense. We know what Failure is, what Success is, and what incredible Success is. They match reality.

The probabilities of each also match reality. Incredible success is rare. "No problem!" is uncommon. And failure is, unfortunately, all too common. (How many bad films has Spielberg made?)

Goal 3: They're easy to describe. The mechanics are linked to the real world, so GM's can use real world experience to describe them. And players can understand those descriptions, because they're grounded in the real world.

Skill Challenges are the core of the game. These are the mechanics people will encounter again and again, several times per session. And they're built to implement the three main design goals.

Now that you understand where I'm coming from, I want to back up and cover all the nuts and bolts I skipped over. I'll start with Attributes and go on from there.

Thanks for reading and commenting.

Attributes

Characters have six Attributes: Dexterity, Strength, Endurance, Intellect, Influence, and Spirit. These represent the innate abilities of the character, whereas skills are learned abilities.

Attributes are rated numerically, with higher values representing more potent Attributes. Attribute Ratings for humans range from 5 (Deficient) to 15 (Legendary). Human average is 10.

Each Attribute has an inherent mechanical effect (see below) and provides a bonus to associated skills:

Rating — Bonus
5 — +1
6-8 — +2
9-11— +3
12-14 — +4
15 — +5

Each Attribute has a number of associated skills. Dexterity skills include Acrobatics and Dodge; Strength, Lifting and Melee weapons; Influence covers Charm and Persuade.

Dexterity
This represents flexibility, fine motor skills, reflexes, running speed, and other related areas. Characters with a high Dexterity are gymnasts and athletes of every sort, escape artists, stage magicians, parkour aficionados, and martial artists.
Mechanic: Dexterity is used in Initiative. The higher your Dexterity, the faster you react.

Strength
This represents a character’s physical prowess: how much they can lift and carry, how hard they punch and swing a sword. Characters with a high Strength are weightlifters, circus strong-men, and so forth.
Mechanic: Strength determines the amount one can lift and carry and the base amount of damage with hand-to-hand weapons.

Endurance
Endurance describes a character’s health: their ability to resist poisons and disease, to endure physical stress and exertion, and other related areas.
Mechanic: Endurance resists damage, poisons, etc.

Intellect
A high Intellect makes a person “smart”. They learn faster, have a deeper understanding, retain more information, react quicker, and notice more. Scientists, college professors, inventors, engineers, and so on all have a high Intellect.
Mechanic: Intellect determines bonus skills during character creation.

Influence
Influence is the ability to successfully affect others socially. People with a high Influence are persuasive, charming, and adept at fitting in with others and building strong relationships. Salesmen, con men, politicians, rock stars, actors, the popular kids, and serial killers all have high Influence.
Mechanic: Influence determines the base attitude of strangers. (Characters who like you will treat you well, those who dislike you won't.)

Spirit
Spirit is the mental and spiritual strength of a character. A high Spirit implies self-reliance, confidence, a strong will, and stubbornness.
Mechanic: Spirit resists mental damage.

Attribute Design Notes

Why go with Attributes that are fairly close (if not identical) to the D&D "standard six"? Why go with something so conventional and uninspired?

Simple. Direct. Obvious.

Strength. Use that name, and people know what you mean. Instantly.

I could have called it Brawn, Power, Muscle, Burliness, or Might. But there's no point in giving it an Attribute an unusual name, just so I can pretend that it's not Strength.

Pretending to be different, while actually being the same, is kind of silly. It's pretend innovation. It's novelty simply for the sake of novelty.

I certainly could have made kind-of-new attributes. I considered it. I looked at ideas I'd had, going back decades, as well as stats from several other systems (FASERIP, Masterbook, Shadowrun, Interlok, Hero Games, and others).

Here's the problem: mechanics shouldn't take people out of the game. And an Attribute system that is weird, absolutely would.

Example: Back in 1997, I made the case that you could combine Endurance and Strength. And you could, quite easily, and it'd be realistic. Call it Fitness, and it'd work.

But any minute mechanical advantage Fitness would bring (balance DEX against STR and TOU), would be cancelled by the annoyance factor. Inevitably, it'd annoy some players.

Then there's the "I don't think that's realistic" factor. Some people would believe that, and argue about that, then I'd have to argue about muscle mass causing Strength and how maintaining muscle mass requires Fitness, so they're the same, and... "no, really, it's realistic!"

When a game designer is reduced to arguing with players in the text of the rulebook, they've already lost.

Mechanics, and labels for them, should have a reason to exist. And novelty, just for the sake of novelty, isn't a good enough reason.

I chose these Attributes because:

1) They are useable in any genre, and thus suited for an omni-genre RPG system.
2) They are universally understood. (The given definitions being almost redundant. Almost.)
3) They are realistic. (Or, at least, realistic enough to be acceptable to most people.)

Each Attribute is included for a reason, and each has a mechanical part to play. I chose names that reflect what the Attribute is, and where my names differ from the standard six, it's because they're actually different.

Why isn't Influence called "Charisma"? Because characters with a high Influence can be charismatic, but they can also be friendly, persuasive, likable, or physically attractive (any one of these or all of them at the same time).

Any number of qualities can underlie Influence. What matters for mechanics is the effect, not the source. Not all people with a high Influence are charismatic.

I'm not trying to make a game that is wholly novel. Novel is great, but novelty must be balanced by utility. And these Attributes offer a great deal of utility, even if they they don't greatly differ from the "standard six".