15. Attribute Ratings
I am going to break Attribute Ratings out from Resistance Rolls, which feels like an interesting call. But, heck, call this an experiment: Can Attribute Ratings stand on their own? Or are they simply a bridge to more central parts of the design?
Now THIS is amazing design. I don’t think it’s overstating it to say that Attribute Ratings are one of my favourite parts of this game as a designer. It’s beautiful and elegant and really feeds off John’s history as a graphic designer. It’s communicated easily, clearly, simply, and functionally. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen.
“Okay, your action rating tells you how many dice you have, right? Well, your Attribute is how many action ratings you have at least one die in.” God DAMN is this beautiful. Have you ever heard the old quote about “you don’t understand something unless you can describe it to your grandmother” (Misattributed to any number of clever people, with almost zero evidence any of them said it)? That’s what this is about. “You haven’t done elegant design until Sidney can describe it to their mum”. This is just such a beautiful slice of design that is easy to teach and easy to learn.
And it matters! That’s the second half of elegance. That’s what separates the elegant from the easy: Functionality. Attribute Ratings provide a wonderful tool that the game can apply to itself. Attributes offer a type of power that is orthogonal to the existing power structure of Action Ratings (meaning that they are different both in number but also in use, quantitatively and qualitatively). That orthogonality creates a game design concept called “incomparability”. An “Incomparable Difference” is any difference that is so qualitatively different (that is, that players interact so differently) that the player can’t mathematically assess one against the other*. In this way the choice of whether to take another die in Skirmish, or your first die in Wreck become interesting and twisted. The addition of an extra resistance die is valuable to the player, so it benefits a character to spread themselves out (which increases their chance of 4/5 results, which they’ll want to resist, which rewards spreading out. It’s very good design!)
*Footnote: I’ve seen people use “difference in kind” to express this as well, and while it works, I’m also more familiar with Differences in Kind referring to a difference in player interaction that modulates the engagement/attention curve, rather than as a comparison between objects. That is: Differences in Kind as it’s usually taught is a Feature-level description, whereas Incomparability or Orthogonality is able to be applied in an almost fractal way, zooming in and out on the design of a game.
The real beauty of Attributes is that they’re choice stacking. They’re a product of extant decisions. It’s not “do you put point into actions or into resistances” it’s “you put points into these actions, so these are your resistances”. In the same way that, say, Burning Wheel wants to use derived attributes
“A character’s mortal wound tolerance is the average of his Power and Forte, rounded down, plus six. If Power and Forte are black shade, mortal wound is back shade. If Power and Forte are gray shade, add two to the total before averaging, but the shade of the mortal wound remains in the black”
Derived attributes have historically been a fucking mess. A player-calculated list of overages and additions. A granular addition of 10 plus half your level plus armour plus shield plus ability modifiers plus further modifiers, and the ability modifier is different depending on which is higher. Blades’ Attributes are one of my favourite derived attributes methods ever. Elegant. Functional. Easy to see.
I’m throwing this under a line break because I’m going to ideate and vamp for a bit. This is going to be a little design corner for myself where I think out loud about using the stuff we’ve discussed above while it’s still fresh. Feel free to skip it, or feel free to take the ideas and run with them (just, please let me know and be professional about it. Unlike last time…)
My first Ideation here is about derived attributes, and how I love the use of your constitution creating your hit points, for example. This feels like it’d be effectively a 1:1 translation for a game that used multiple defences like 4th edition D&D: Reflex, Fortitude, Will are easily alignable with Insight, Prowess, Resolve, right? This is a great way to think about design in FitD: What is the main decision a player is making to build their character, and how do I make the more granular details of that character calculate as products of that core decision?
I’ve said before that the best stat system in CRPG is Pillars of Eternity’s Attribute system which ties the details of effects (damage, duration, area of effect, speed) to different attributes such that there are “no dump stats”. (Josh Sawyer if you google yourself and read this, please know that you’re my professional hero and I would love to have a conversation with you about your design-lead philosophy and approach to systems design. I am much smarter than this daily blog suggests, and a conversation with me would be a joy for both of us. Reach out, please). PoE creates a situation where stats are tied not to sources of power (ie Intellect is for Wizard magic and benefits all of the Wizard magic things), but to the individual levers of effectiveness. Intellect is AoE and Duration, so a Wizard would love that for their Blizzard spell. But, the Paladin would also like Intellect to increase their aura. And both want Perception for accuracy, and Dexterity for action speed, and they both probably want Might for Damage and Healing too!
But PoE is a Computer RPG, and the math that goes into this makes it unusable for a tabletop game. But the idea is right. Oh it’s SO RIGHT. It’s so beautiful that I want to steal it and take credit for it and frame the Ennie that I win by poaching this idea.
I would love more designers to think about derived attributes, and think about them with the simplicity of Blades in the Dark. I know it’ll be part of my design flow from now on.
I want to ideate for a little bit, based off our discussion earlier. I mentioned on Day 14 that the 5e tech of “Main Effectiveness, Contributing Effectiveness” (Strength Intimidation) is a really cool way of framing rolls, because it allows for players to talk in both axes (what you want to achieve and how you do it, or what’s at stake) or at least to create some granularity when desired. I wonder if there’s a type of FitD design that would benefit from dice pools being Attribute/Action to provide players that flexibility. Wouldn’t work with blades, because the two are tied together so closely. But imagine this one (written with the speed of The Daily Blade, so forgive the shonky design):
X is a usable die/coloured dot. O is a uncoloured dot. So “XOO Inspect” means 1 die in Inspect, with the protentional to go to three.
BREATH XXX
XXO Inspect
XOO Understand
XOO Comfort
SWEAT XOO
OOO Constrain
XOO Order
OOO Dash
BLOOD XXO
XOO Shoot
XXO Punch
OOO Scream
”Okay so I’m going to shoot this guy, so I’ll be rolling Shoot, obviously, but I’m perched up on this high point. I’ve got all the time in the world. Usually shoot would be with Blood, but I think this is a Breath-Shoot. and roll 4 dice instead of 3.”
There’s a few fundamental changes that would have to occur to make this usable, but I love the idea of it. Or what if instead of having Attributes and Actions we used Approaches and Actions
QUIETLY
Study
Prowl
Finesse
SAFELY
Skirmish
Hunt
QUICKLY
Wreck
This conversation is already had in Blades in the Dark. It’s really important that we’re not adding anything to the system here. The desire negotiation phases allow for this kind of discussion: “I’d like to Wreck, Quickly” is the same as saying “Can I trade position for effect by cutting a few corners as I set the explosives?”. I’m simply looking at reformalising that discussion into the assertion of the roll, rather than hoping it gets picked up in the back end. My one complaint about how Blades handles negotiation is that it’s very easy for a player to get bitten by a consequence they didn’t expect, because it wasn’t telegraphed correctly (Telegraphing well is part of best practices, but the game is inelastic to it, and so it’s very easy to do wrong).
Forgive a lack of conclusion to the ideation section. As usual ideation is a hanging thread until something can be playtested.
Header Image is "Clean water" by ssilberman is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
