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Tri-stat had, even in its title, made a virtue out of having only three stats.
The other night Sun Boy was telling me about how he found a game (that I didn't recognize, perhaps someone here can tell me its name) that has only two stats: "combat" and "non-combat".

On the other side, you have games like Shadowrun or Alpha-Omega, who feel the need to have 15 stats and a half-dozen extra secondary stats (and in A-O's case another half dozen tertiary stats).

How many stats are the right amount?

For me, the ideal is between 5 and 8, with 6 being the best choice.

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My game has around 20. I like having a lot of statistics.

6 is good - the game I made myself from first principles had 6 - Strength Speed Skill Agility Stamina & Magic.  Or the classic D&D six.

Twerps (The Worlds Easiest Role-Playing System) had two, Physical and Mental. Physical was mostly for combat, unless it was a spell, then it was Mental.

For me, the stats you use and how they're used is intrinsically part of the flavor of the game. I couldn't say there was perfect number unless you were talking about a particular game in question.

I think D&D works well with six stats. Gurps works well with 4 (and a few derived stats). Toon does well with Five. WoD is perfect with it's 9.

I will say, I thinks it's dumb that a lot of games use mental stats for socializing (Gurps and Palladium for example). But in the end, it's the system that determines the flavor of the game and how many or how few stats is never EVER something I consider when deciding to play one.

I prefer no stats at all.

Stats are so 20th Century.

Just abilities are the way to go.

Quote from: KrakaJak;309644Twerps (The Worlds Easiest Role-Playing System) had two, Physical and Mental. Physical was mostly for combat, unless it was a spell, then it was Mental.
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Actually Twerps just has the one stat, Strength. What you then have are a bunch of skill and special abilities that provided bonuses to Strength for specifc activties.
In that respect the name "Strenght" is someone misleading. "Level" might have been a better name for it.

I'm not saying Twerps is a great system or that is was ever meant as anything more than a joke at the expense of Gurps, however it actually works a good deal better than it  ought to. Especially in the supers version, it did not seem to matter that much that character only had the one stat, when in effect the superpowers did he job of differentiating the characters well enough.

But in the end, it was the great artwork and the funny text that make Twerps a minor classic.

I like that The Fantasy Trip only has three, but I also like how Top Secret has six, with another eight secondary and tertiary stats derived from those starting six.

So, it depends on how they are implemented.

Quote from: Soylent Green;309649Actually Twerps just has the one stat, Strength. What you then have are a bunch of skill and special abilities that provided bonuses to Strength for specifc activties.
In that respect the name "Strenght" is someone misleading. "Level" might have been a better name for it.

I'm not saying Twerps is a great system or that is was ever meant as anything more than a joke at the expense of Gurps, however it actually works a good deal better than it  ought to. Especially in the supers version, it did not seem to matter that much that character only had the one stat, when in effect the superpowers did he job of differentiating the characters well enough.

But in the end, it was the great artwork and the funny text that make Twerps a minor classic.

Your Twerps was different from my Twerps.

EDIT:Although I never had the rulebok myself, that's how we played...but Twerps was fun.

Obviously, it depends, but I prefer when stats are tied to the game that I'm playing. Tri-Stat obviously wanted to get them out of the way, and I understand that since, at their heart, I feel that stats (as they're typically used) tend to cause problems.

D&D, which I have gotten a lot of mileage out of, started off with stats that were pretty intuitive but I think that many other games (even ones that I also enjoy) try to use that same type of stat regardless of if it lends anything to the game.

I thought about it a lot, and when I came up with a home-brew, basically it was set up to run a series of stats that default to '1' that define the main things people want the game to be about. (In a swords and sorcery fantasy game, you might only have two or three stats - one governing might-based activities, one governing intelligence or wisdom-based activities, and one governing charm, if you want it). I like to throw in an 'everything else' stat, in case none of the above was any use. Obviously not every game needs a setup like that. (It was a generic type game for running something on the fly).

I like to stay away from too many derivative stats these days. Generally 'generic' stats remind me of d20-clones at this point.

I've checked. The game in question was "3:16 - Carnage Amongst the Stars". The stats are "Fighting Ability and "Non-fighting Ability". What a waste of a perfectly beautiful cover. Well, Ron Edwards gave "Game System Advice" and the game won a Ronnie.
On-t, I find that usually anywhere between three and eight is just fine, with less than three lacking and more than ten being a pain. I was gonna say 5, but then I remembered tri-stat. That one worked just fine.

Games differ in what they call "stats". In general, games make a distinction between innate talents, or learned things which don't change much once you're an adult, and skills, things which you can learn or change relatively quickly as an adult.

Thus, strength is commonly an attribute, since while you can change it as an adult, to make a lasting change, one that lasts once the training stops, this takes some time. Whereas running is usually a skill, you can learn to do it better, much more quickly than you can change your underlying strength, reflexes and fitness.

With that in mind, the minimum attribute split that makes sense is Brains and Brawn. But people usually like to be able to distinguish between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan and some marathon runner, so we split Brawn into Strength, Agility and Fitness. Likewise, we like to be able to distinguish between someone who is "switched on" but not well-educated, and someone who is confident but not very aware or well-read, so we split Brains into Perception, Education and Confidence.

Thus we end up with six, three physical and three mental. Some games will omit the Confidence, as they prefer to leave that to roleplaying. Others will merge two of the others, such as Perception and Education being rolled together into Intelligence.

Others still will want to have some stats like Quickness, deriving it from Strength and Agility perhaps; but usually it's not a true attribute, since it doesn't change on its own, it comes straight from Str/Agl. Most commonly derived attributes appear in large amounts in games which have relatively few primary attributes, for example GURPS has 4/6 (Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, Health, and Basic Speed, Move, Hit Points, Fatigue Points, Perception, Will).

It's well-known that humans tend to remember up to seven digits well, more than that and they might forget. So with that in mind, not more than seven attributes seems best. If as in GURPS you have just four attributes, it's easy to remember them all. If as in Rolemaster you have 12 (or was it 10?), probably not. I think it's important for a player to remember their character's attributes, since this helps them get into the events of the session; every time you look at numbers or charts, you're reminded of the "game" part of "roleplaying game". We want some game for the fun, but not so much that the roleplaying is overshadowed.

So between "so few that the characters all look the same", and "so many you can't remember them", there's a sensible middle ground of 4-7. For my particular style of play, 6 works well.

I have to say, that was a nice little essay.

I find 6-7 is the magic number of stats for me. More than that and things feel to broken up. Less than that and it seems like there is something missing.

Quote from: The Shaman;309652I like that The Fantasy Trip only has three,

Bull. It has 5. ST, DX, IQ, MA, AdjDX. The latter two are figured by race, encumbrance and armor, and are required for play.

Likewise, GURPS has 4, and three figured:
ST, DX, IQ, HT; MA, Passive Defense, and Active Defense are figured
Plus the pseudo-stats derived from others:
ST/Fatigue
Health/Hits
Int  (Will/Charisma/Magic)

Kyle: RM has 10, with an option for an 11th.

I like 5-8 primary, and 0-8 figured from them.

I accept Kyle's definition ("stuff that doesn't change much") although there you probably have to add that we're talking about stuff that takes a range of values as opposed to 0/1 toggles like Advantages.

I think stats ought to be broadly applicable and universally relevant to the PCs. E.g. I seem to recall a game (Harnmaster? Pendragon?) that has a stat for how nice a voice you have. Now this may matter quite a bit in a chivalric game so I don't begrudge the example system, but it's silly to include a stat like that in other games. If a PC has an especially nice or unpleasant voice, it can be handled by a special case rule (an Ad/Disad) or just made up and roleplayed. No need to have everyone track that stat.

I also think that stats, especially primary stats, ought to represent qualities that are fairly independent of each other. I mean the idea that Strength and Constitution need to be generated separately and independently is a bit silly, isn't it? True, the world's strongest man may not be immune to catching colds but there's obviously a correlation between mass, strength, and ability withstand damage--yet the classic "roll 6 abilities straight across" approach is prone to producing freaks--and so is a point-buy system that forces/allows you to buy strength and damage capacity completely independently.

Between these two concerns I agree with the emerging consensus that 10 is probably an upper limit, though I'm not sure if that's purely because of the human capacity to track a number of different elements, or if it's related to some deeper truth about the "dimensionality" of human potential and its "eigenvectors", so to speak.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;309704I accept Kyle's definition ("stuff that doesn't change much") although there you probably have to add that we're talking about stuff that takes a range of values as opposed to 0/1 toggles like Advantages.

Good point!

However, many games have no dis/advantages, but almost all games have attributes and skills.

Quote from: Elliot WilenI think stats ought to be broadly applicable and universally relevant to the PCs. E.g. I seem to recall a game (Harnmaster? Pendragon?) that has a stat for how nice a voice you have. Now this may matter quite a bit in a chivalric game so I don't begrudge the example system, but it's silly to include a stat like that in other games.

Harnmaster has it, yes. They also have separate attributes for Eyesight, Hearing, and Smell.

In Harnmaster, attributes are rarely rolled against directly. The attributes are used as the base for skills, an average of three attributes for each skill (sometimes one attribute doubles up in the base). For example when you first buy Climbing skill, it begins as 4x the average of Strength, Dexterity and Agility. When you buy Acrobatics, it begins as 1x the average of Strength, Agility and Agility.

Voice factors into communications skills like Acting, Lovecraft, and Rhetoric.

It's part of the 1980s trend of attempting to get realism by lots of little details. Bring in three attributes, they reason, and it must be realistic. The trouble is that when you bring in three attributes which were themselves generated by rolling 3d6, you usually get some skill base of 8-12. So even in the Skill Base x4 skills, the biggest starting difference is from 32% to 48%. Not really a big deal. In play you don't get a strong sense that because Agrigor has better Agility than Barinald, Agrigor is naturally better at Acrobatics.

Thus, even if some obscure attribute like Voice is part of the flavour of the campaign, much of the flavour is lost by being mixed with so many others. As I said above, when you have lots of numbers, you can't remember them all and they stop meaning much to you.

Quote from: Elliot WilenI also think that stats, especially primary stats, ought to represent qualities that are fairly independent of each other. I mean the idea that Strength and Constitution need to be generated separately and independently is a bit silly, isn't it?

This is true, but difficult to make rules about. If you tie the different attributes to each-other, for example by saying that Strength must be within 30% of Fitness, then what you get in effect is... two attributes, Brains and Brawn. Which may or may not be realistic, but most players enjoy a bit more flavour than this.

Quote from: Elliot Wilenthe classic "roll 6 abilities straight across" approach is prone to producing freaks--and so is a point-buy system that forces/allows you to buy strength and damage capacity completely independently.

That's not really an issue of how attributes are split, but rather how they're generated.

For example, if you roll 1d20 x5  for each attribute, you are fairly likely to have attributes which vary a lot. But if you roll 10d10, they'll be very clustered in the middle, and you're unlikely to get extremes.

I'd also say that what is a "freak" is pretty subjective. Obviously an emphysemic strongman makes no sense, but a strongman prone to catching colds does - lots of top athletes have frequent colds and flu because they put their bodies under strain.

Lastly, the very freakishness can be what players enjoy, because it inspires them to make something sane and interesting of those wacky stats.

Quote from: Elliot WilenBetween these two concerns I agree with the emerging consensus that 10 is probably an upper limit, though I'm not sure if that's purely because of the human capacity to track a number of different elements, or if it's related to some deeper truth about the "dimensionality" of human potential and its "eigenvectors", so to speak.

It's both. I already mentioned the rule of seven above. As for the rest, this ties in with the emphysemic strongman. The more different elements we have, the more likely we are to get that sort of freakish character.

For example, one system I playtested had Strength and Carrying Capacity as two different stats. Thus, we could have a circus strongman who could never carry more than a handbag, and an emaciated dwarf who could carry a huge treasure chest on his back, Nodwick-style. We simply couldn't imagine that, it corresponded to nothing in reality, except that some people are good or bad at packing; but not to those extremes. The characters were being split into more dimensions than anyone really has.

What we have to realise is that it's all an abstraction, and all abstractions fail when you look at them at their lowest level of detail. For example, years ago I played a wargame called Fortress Europa. The smallest unit was a division. When they fought, they might retreat or die, but they couldn't be "wounded". Thus, entire divisions of 10-20,000 men were regularly being utterly routed, destroyed, or surrendering en masse. In reality, this rarely happens in conventional warfare, much more common is that a unit takes some casualties and withdraws, or retreats in disorder but if given a few days or weeks will pull itself back together.

However, if we ignored that and pulled back to look at the whole game board, the movement of front lines and capturing of towns and so on, all this looked much like a map of the real WWII. So while the lowest level of abstraction was nonsense, the end result looked at as a whole made a lot of sense.

That applies whatever our lowest level of abstraction is.  It's worth remembering that in the first dungeon crawls, the combat system was that two character/figurines would face off, and whoever rolled best would win and be unharmed, while the foe was killed - all with a single roll. That level of abstraction made a lot of sense when players had small armies of dozens of figurines, but made no sense to the players who were playing just one character. Thus the use of Ironclad rules, giving us Armor Class, Hit Points and so on. But of course, many people thought that abstraction made no sense, thus the development of RuneQuest and the like.

The fact that Risus and GURPS can both sell and be happily played in the world of gamers shows that there are many different levels of abstraction players are happy with. So I think there is no hard and fast rule about this. All abstractions make no sense at their lowest level, we can only hope that when looking at the system as a whole, its emergent properties during play make sense.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;309708That's not really an issue of how attributes are split, but rather how they're generated.

For example, if you roll 1d20 x5  for each attribute, you are fairly likely to have attributes which vary a lot. But if you roll 10d10, they'll be very clustered in the middle, and you're unlikely to get extremes.

General agreement on all the other points, Kyle, but here you're not being entirely fair to what I've said. If you generate the attributes the way you describe, then either way the statistical correlation between attributes will be 0--by definition, since they're the result of independent random variables. All that you achieve by using the 10d10 method is that everyone tends to be somewhat average...not that a weak person is likely to have a low carrying capacity. "Freaks" will indeed be less likely but only because you've unnecessarily (and unrealistically/unsatisfyingly) compressed the range of human potential.

The usual definition of 'stats' excludes such things as class, race, level, skills, and alignment. It's probably more relevant to count how many elements define a character in total.

All versions of D&D have the same 6 stats in a sense, but clearly there are more variables in some versions than others. Similarly, Tunnels & Trolls has 6-8 stats depending on edition, whereas GURPS has only 3, but characters aren't simpler in GURPS than in Tunnels & Trolls.

Sure, Elliot. But I used the extremes for clarity.

The thing is that whatever your system, you are going to get some "what the fuck?" results, whether in character generation, combat or whatever. All we can do is minimise those.

But... as the saying goes, fiction is more restricted than reality because fiction has to make sense. So if we want something which feels realish, we don't want to have no "WTF?!" moments at all. Because sometimes "WTF?!" turns into "hmmm, interesting." If "WTF?!" turns up half the time, that's bad. If it turns up in (say) one character in every party, and a few times in a campaign, that's okay, I reckon.

That's where the generation method matters, giving you varying numbers of "WTF?!" moments.

Freaks become much more problematic when attributes cover a very small range of stuff. For example, when I was about 18 I designed a game system where there were separate attributes for upper and lower body strength (I'd begun working out at the time and it seemed important to me). This of course led to many "WTF?!" moments and not much "that's interesting..."

So if you keep the attributes to a reasonable number - say, under 10 - then it minimises the "WTF?!" moments, and means they're more likely to lead to something interesting. The low-endurance strongman isn't emphysemic, he's just grossly obese. The low-strength super-dextrous person isn't a piano virtuoso and stage magician who's confined to bed, they're just a young kid doing gymnastics. And so on.

Thus, you actually want to have attributes have some overlap in their definitions. Where they overlap is what gives you some room to turn "WTF?!" into "interesting..."

Six shall be the holy number.

Seven be too many, confusion and sorrow shall follow when seven be the number.

Five be too few, anguish and rending of hair will be such a number's consequence.

Actually, I'm fine with less than five.  Three to six is my happy zone.

Regarding Fantasy Trip, AdjDx wasn't a stat, it was a temporary adjustment to the Dex stat, the name was perhaps a clue to that.  MA was constant for all members of a given race, I wouldn't call that a stat either.

Regarding fighting and not fighting, the ur-source is I think Ron Edward's Trollbabe, which has two stats, Combat and Magic (I may have the names wrong, that's the essence though).  3:16 was probably influenced by that.

Prince Valiant had just two as well actually, Brawn and was it Presence?

Quote from: aramis;309695Bull. It has 5. ST, DX, IQ, MA, AdjDX. The latter two are figured by race, encumbrance and armor, and are required for play.

"Last".  "Former" and "latter" apply only when there are two options.  Numerical Nazism begets grammar Nazism!  I would insert a smiley here (possibly the rolling one) but I detest emoticons.

Hairfoot Doesn't agree with the three style manuas I've been required to use. Pity for him.

Quote from: aramis;309747Hairfoot Doesn't agree with the three style manuas I've been required to use. Pity for him.

You can't be serious.  Those must be the same manuals used by all the forum posters who think "lose" is spelled "loose".  Did your employer buy them from Lithuania, with a box of herbal viagra advertised in a spam email?

EDIT: this is in humour, by the way.  I'll get into flame wars about some petty bullshit, but style manuals would set a new low.

Two were requisite for my masters program (of the 3 used in same said program); the third for my BA. I've only got 5 style manuals in the apt. But the fact that lots of people don't spell well, that's life. Typographical errors happen; again, that's life. Grow up, quit being an arsehole about niggling off topic bullshit.

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Anyway, TFT: AdjDX in TFT is used as a stat, and not all rolls for DX based stuff used AdjDx. In fact, it pretty much is used only for casting and weapons.

And MA, while it is static for a given race, as a generality, varies by load, and is the most commonly used numerical rating in the game. On the sheets by metagaming, it is in the stat area.

I don't think that "stats", that is, base attributes, are really in a position to vary much between games, given that they describe things common to people, whatever the setting. Personally, I think 8 is a good number, as six has never sat well with me in what it forces together ("Wisdom" comprises willpower and perception? Really?). I like even numbers, so that there's a good split between physical and mental attributes.

Quote from: Balbinus;309738Regarding Fantasy Trip, AdjDx wasn't a stat, it was a temporary adjustment to the Dex stat, the name was perhaps a clue to that.  MA was constant for all members of a given race, I wouldn't call that a stat either.

Beat me to it.