r/rpg • u/StarshipGoldfish • 16h ago
Discussion What's the cleverest spin a game's put on its Attribute system?
Disco Elysium started out as a tabletop RPG and theirs was pretty neat:
Intellect (INT) — Reasoning & Knowledge
- Logic (deduction and rational conclusions)
- Encyclopedia (factual knowledge about the world)
- Rhetoric (debate, persuasion, and spotting flawed logic)
- Drama (lying, acting, and detecting deceit)
- Conceptualisation (art, abstract ideas, and pattern recognition)
- Visual Calculus (reconstructing crime scenes and spatial physics)
Psyche (PSY) — Intuition & Emotion
- Volition (mental fortitude and self-control; governs Morale)
- Inland Empire (gut feelings, surreal imagination, and premonitions)
- Empathy (understanding and feeling other people's emotions)
- Authority (assertiveness, dominance, and command)
- Esprit de Corps (police instinct and brotherhood with precinct)
- Suggestion (charm, charisma, and subtle influence)
Physique (FYS) — Strength & Stamina
- Endurance (physical toughness and stamina; governs Health)
- Pain Threshold (withstanding physical and emotional pain)
- Physical Instrument (brute force and raw muscle)
- Electrochemistry (cravings, pleasure-seeking, and substance affinity)
- Shivers (visceral awareness of the city around you)
- Half Light (fight-or-flight, panic, and threat recognition)
Motorics (MOT) — Coordination & Agility
- Hand/Eye Coordination (dexterity and manual precision)
- Perception (noting small physical details in your environment)
- Reaction Speed (reflexes, quick wit, and fast answers)
- Savoir Faire (athletic style, parkour, and smoothness)
- Interfacing (repairing, fine motor control, and handling objects)
- Composure (keeping your cool and hiding your inner turmoil)
- (source: gamefaqs)
52
u/ActualBabyDoyle 15h ago
Masks labels are ingenious imo, they represent how your character perceives themselves (Danger, Freak, Savior, Superior, and Mundane) and fluctuate as that changes, notably when people with influence over you tell you how you should be. In addition to being delightfully grounded in the role play, it's also fun to have strengths and weaknesses change over the course of a campaign
15
u/xsnowpeltx 15h ago
I love Masks labels, especially how well they mesh ludonarratively. The labels themselves match genre wise with teen superhero media, and the shifting of the labels mechanically shows the way teens are so easily impacted in their self image by the people and situations around him
2
u/Brokeiehl 8h ago edited 6h ago
I personally don't like the Masks attributes, or most other similar systems, because I think that kind of fusion of the abstract ("How do you see yourself?") and concrete ("how bad do your punches hurt?") ends up tacitly encouraging or even outright enforcing kind of trite, cliche characters.
2
u/ActualBabyDoyle 6h ago
I'm curious what you mean, could you expand on that?
3
u/Brokeiehl 5h ago edited 4h ago
Sure. I think when an attribute is supposed to reference something very conceptual about your character's emotions or their personality or whatever and represent their competency with regard certain specific tasks, it ends up funneling characters into certain tropes and archetypes where every character who wants to be good at a certain task may not have to have exactly the same personalty, but at the very least must prominently share certain personality traits.
For example, in Masks, you roll +danger to "directly engage a threat," which kind of means that every character who is good at directly engaging threats has to also be a character who thinks of themselves as a danger, and vice versa; characters who think of themselves as dangers will be statistically better at directly engaging threats than characters who don't. The same goes for the other stats and the rolls they govern: if you want a character who is good at unleashing their powers, they have to conceive of themselves as a freak and if you want to make a character who conceives of themselves as a freak, they're going to be good at unleashing their powers.
I think that type of attribute system tends to produce worse — or at least less original — characters than a system where characters can be good or bad at directly engaging with threats regardless of the adjectives they would use to describe themselves.
2
u/ActualBabyDoyle 4h ago
Interesting! In my experience ive found most players care far more about their characterization and perception and dont give much attention to making sure they're effective at a particular style of play. Plus, since its a fiction forward game they're often triggering all the basic moves at different times through natural action/reaction rather than "choosing" moves more intentionally.
I also think theres an interesting ludonarrative with the conflict youre describing: someone who wants desperately to be dangerous so they keep affirming that and seeking others to affirm it so they can stay sharp and ready to fight is already telling a story about a character their motives.
That said, it does make five boiled down archetypes that can wash away a little specificity in the abstract, though that also helps players latch on to genre tropes and I haven't experienced even multiple Bulls (which prioritize a single label more than most playbooks) in diff campaigns feel like identical pastiches.
30
u/dorward roller of dice 15h ago
Smallville: Duty, Glory, Justice, Love, Power, and Truth (with another die being provided by a relationship with another character who matters for the roll).
It isn't about how good you are, it's about what drives you to do it.
Lois Lane is breaking into Lex Luthor's office to search for evidence about the contaminated water supply to expose him? Roll Truth + Lex Luthor.
Clark Kent is breaking into Lex Luthor's office to search for evidence about the contaminated water supply to give to the sheriff? Roll Justice + Lex Luthor.
4
u/Pariahdog119 D20 / 40k / WoD • Former Prison DM 10h ago
So that's why there are so many encounters with Meteor Freak of the Week: an unestablished character no one has a relationship with to challenge the dice rolls!
86
u/Alcamair 16h ago
the spin of Disco Elysium is that every Attribute is a stand-alone character that speaks with the main protagonist. You may play it with the rules of Everyone is John.
15
u/Jarderino 11h ago
Been wanting to do exactly this. Have my players create an aspect of a character without talking to eachother and then revealing they're all the same guy trying to solve a murder with no recollection of who he is.
21
u/BetterCallStrahd 15h ago
Spire: The City Must Fall. It's a dice pool system, and your attributes are divided into skills (compel, deceive, fight, fix, investigate, pursue, resist, sneak, steal) and domains (academia, commerce, crime, high society, low society, occult, order, religion, technology).
So if you have the right skill, you get an extra d10 to your dice pool. If your action involves one of your domains, you get an extra d10. Ideally, your action will involve both. The more d10s, the better. It's simple yet very satisfying.
I also really like Blades in the Dark's approach. BitD has only three attributes: Insight, Prowess, and Resolve. These are used to resist consequences, not for the Action Roll (which is one of the more elegant roll mechanics I've seen).
40
u/Airk-Seablade 15h ago
Yeah, this is a really unexciting example from this perspective? (Yeah, Disco Elysium has a cool thing going on, but it's not what you wrote in your post).
I think my favorite "Attribute" system is in Masks, where the Labels aren't anything fundamental about your character (If you have super strength, you always have super strength regardless of what your 'stats' are) but rather, your character's self image. So the labels are:
- Freak -- Seeing yourself as Strange, Unique, and an outsider
- Danger -- Seeing yourself as threatening, uncontrolled, dangerous
- Savior -- Seeing yourself as a savior, a protector, someone who sacrifices for others
- Superior -- Seeing yourself as better, smarter, more capable than others
- Mundane -- Seeing yourself as normal, empathetic, and human
And, maybe even more importantly than what the labels 'mean' is the fact that they CHANGE. You're playing a volatile, teenaged superhero, so when an adult tells you who you are, it's hard for those words to NOT hit home and change your self image. So your "stats" are constantly changing as circumstances and people influence them.
And yes, this makes sense. Think about comics. Which superhero is objectively more dangerous? Spider-man, who has enough strength to literally tear a person's arm off, or Wolverine, who is basically an angry man with claws? But the fact is that Wolverine IS the more dangerous one, because he thinks of himself as a killer, whereas Spider-man really DOESN'T WANT to pull your arm off.
3
u/thatguydr 10h ago
This sort of framing is awesome, and I didn't know about it. I love it - thank you!
2
u/Brokeiehl 5h ago edited 5h ago
And yes, this makes sense. Think about comics. Which superhero is objectively more dangerous? Spider-man, who has enough strength to literally tear a person's arm off, or Wolverine, who is basically an angry man with claws? But the fact is that Wolverine IS the more dangerous one, because he thinks of himself as a killer, whereas Spider-man really DOESN'T WANT to pull your arm off.
I think this is actually an example of how the framing doesn't make sense. It's at best reductive and at worst a total misreading of how self-perception influences behavior and capabilities. Yes, Wolverine is okay with killing and Spider-man would rather not pull your arm off, but I don't think those two facts actually have much to do with whether either truly sees themself as "a danger" and, in fact, I think their self-perception actually breaks in pretty much the opposite direction.
In order for Spider-man to avoid ripping arms off willy nilly every time he goes to restrain a purse-snatcher, he has to be pretty constantly aware of the fact that his strength makes him dangerous; he cannot know to hold back from inadvertently endangering others without thinking of himself as a danger. On a more thematic level, he is also pretty famously defined by his awareness of the responsibility that comes with his power and his fear of/guilt over endangering people he loves. His constant awareness of putting people around him in danger is a core element of his character.
Meanwhile, Wolverine's core theme is the melancholy alienation of his long and violent life; his willingness to kill is tied to a self-perception as a "savior" rather than a "danger." He does what he has to keep the people he cares about safe (he's the best at what he does), even if it takes an emotional toll on him or pushes those people away (what he does isn't pretty), and does so despite the tragic inevitability that he will outlive pretty much all of them because he's a functionally immortal angry man with claws. When we see Wolverine, he is not typically fretting over the danger he poses to others as our friendly neighborhood Spider-man so often is, but rather either doing or enduring something horrific in the name of protecting others from a danger external to him. He's not the danger, he's the guy who kills the danger no matter how much it hurts him to do it.
Yet, as you say, Wolverine is definitely the more dangerous of the two. In fact, to an extent, he's more dangerous not despite but because he doesn't as fundamentally think of himself as a "danger."
13
u/beardedheathen 11h ago
I love Pendragons values:
Chaste / Lustful
Energetic / Lazy
Forgiving / Vengeful
Generous / Selfish
Honest / Deceitful
Just / Arbitrary
Merciful / Cruel
Modest / Proud
Pious / Worldly
Prudent / Reckless
Temperate / Indulgent
Trusting / Suspicious
Valorous / Cowardly
Your score rests on a scale between the two so if you have a lustful of 7 you have a chaste of 13. This is used for your characters desires and faults. So, if you are at a party and a comely wench comes to invite you to celebrate in her chambers and you don't want to you might need to roll against your chaste to resist her advances.
Also, these are used without judgement. A knight who is indulgent and lustful will be just as valid and useful as a temperate chaste knight. In fact if you are pagan those are virtues rather than vices.
131
u/DemandBig5215 Natural 20! 16h ago
I dunno. I don't want to crap on your example, but it seems like a fairly standard 4 attribute spread. 2 physical and 2 emotional/mental.
The "cleverest" to me was Fate because you don't have separate attributes at all. You just have your skill levels.
92
u/azura26 15h ago
I generally agree with you, but to be fair to OP, the "Physical" attributes in Disco Elysium also control a bunch of "Mental" skills: Shivers, Electrochemistry, Half Light, and Composure are examples.
It's the Skills that are more unique than the Attributes.
5
u/thatguydr 10h ago
Yeah but then it feels even weirder. EQ under agility? Threat recognition (and... composure again) under strength? Both when there's a Psyche stat right there?
This is my huge problem with so many games. It seems like many RPG authors have a sort of fetish for half-assing mental attributes.
21
u/Legatharr 9h ago edited 9h ago
It's because Disco Elysium's skill spread are specifically meant to represent the kind of person the protagonist of the game is, rather than be generally applicable. It's one of the biggest innovations of Disco Elysium: taking advantage of being a video game to laser-target the skills towards the exact kind of person the protagonist is.
The protagonist of the game is a very physical person, so he focuses on his physical abilities when a normal person would be more mental. Also, OP describes the skills in far more precise terms than they really are.
For example, Half-Light isn't just threat recognition, it's also aggression borne of fear. A sense of panic that causes you to push past your limitations. It's a visceral, physical skill, because when the protagonist is pushed to the edge he's a very visceral, physical person
Edit: But, the fight or flight for, say, Kim Kitsuragi I think would be called Trauma-and-Stressor Disorder and I think would be under Intellect. I'm assuming a lot about his character, but I imagine he attempts to rationalize his ptsd, since it goes against his serious, consummate professional persona
27
u/Legatharr 15h ago edited 7h ago
Elysium campaigns were made using the
D20 ModernAdvanced Dungeons & Dragons system, so it makes sense that Disco Elysium would take primary inspiration from it.They're basically the
D20 ModernADND attributes with a different name: Intellect is Intelligence, Psyche is Wisdom and Charisma combined, Physique is Strength and Constitution combined, and Motorics is Dexterity.The skills themselves are custom-made to specifically represent the protagonist (remember that Disco Elysium is a video game, not a ttrpg), rather than be generally usable by any character, and thus can't be ported over to other games or systems, or even other characters in the same game. Kim Kitsuragi, for example, would not have Electrochemistry since he doesn't take drugs, but would probably have a "Speed Freak" skill since he gets his highs from driving fast.
edit: I have no idea how I mixed up D20 Modern with ADND, but I did
1
12
u/nocapfrfrog 15h ago
Farflung is a space opera game that very cleverly used the names of the different types of quarks as attributes.
Bottom is cool-headedness, introversion, introspection, and humility.
Charm is ego, social interaction, leadership, friendliness, and conversation.
Down is resourcefulness, cleverness, mechanics, and making do with what you have.
Strange is id, social dominance, rage, manic episodes, and passion.
Top is hot-headedness, extroversion, planning, and boldness.
Up is intellect, science, abstraction, and higher functions.
It's a very interesting PbtA game, and is currently on sale for $0.01: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/196384/farflung-sci-fi-role-play-after-dark
(I don't think they specifically said, but I believe they put it on sale because one of the artists that worked on it passed away recently.)
13
u/pinktiger4 11h ago
There's no way I could take a game where Bottom and Top are character attributes seriously
1
10
u/eloel- 15h ago
Pillars of Eternity, both the video game and the ttrpg, has Might as a single stat for damage scaling, whatever your method of dealing damage. Cast a Fireball? That'll scale off Might. Hit someone with a sword? That'll scale off Might.
I don't think I see games do that all that much.
3
u/KenDefender 14h ago
Also in Pillars of Eternity 2 the debuff/buff system where every condition is a -5/+5 to a stat and then the severity of a condition imposes additional effects based on the stat, and you can use a corresponding buff in a stat to counteract the debuff for that stat. Its very elegant!
2
u/Velrei Forever DM/Homebrewer 14h ago
Which is unfortunate, since it makes *sense* to handle it like that.
...incidently, my game does so, as well as being used for resisting damage. Makes it far easier to understand the "why" of things, and keep attributes and skills from coming off as esoteric.
Intuitiveness is very important to me, since I suck at explaining rules, and apparently doubling down on further intuitive mechanics is easier then learning to explain things better.
The core testers I have are great for re-explaining the rules in ways I can then use for the manual at least.
9
u/Rezart_KLD 14h ago
Lasers & Feelings. Every character has a single stat, a number on a spectrum between Lasers (logic and science) and Feelings (passion and caring). Your stat stays the same, but how you try to do something affects what you need to roll.
4
u/Shaky_Balance 12h ago
And I think what makes it clever is that you are trying to roll below your stat for Lasers checks and above your stat for Feelings checks. So your single stat number makes one check easier and one harder naturally. For example if your stat is a 2 only rolling 1 or 2 counts as a success for Lasers but for Feelings checks anything 2 or higher counts as a success. It’s impressive how much they squeeze out of a single number.
8
u/N0-1_H3r3 14h ago
I've always been pleased with the version I used in the Dishonored TTRPG - six skills (Fight, Move, Study, Survive, Talk, Tinker) and six styles (Boldly, Carefully, Cleverly, Forcefully, Quietly, Swiftly).
They're not revolutionary (the styles are basically Fate Accelerated's Approaches), but having the skills all be verbs and the styles all be adverbs means that every skill test is something like "Move Quietly" or "Fight Boldly" or "Tinker Cleverly", which I felt was neat.
6
u/Pariahdog119 D20 / 40k / WoD • Former Prison DM 13h ago
World of Darkness had three Physical (Strength, Dexterity, Stamina,) three Mental (Perception, Intelligence, Wits,) and three Social (Appearance, Charisma, Manipulation.) In character creation, you got three sets of points to distribute, one in each category - so you'd have to decide which category you were best at, and which one to dump. In addition, you had a Willpower score, which capped your Willpower pool of points you could spend to improve rolls. These were somewhat arbitrary, being determined by other background choices.
The Chronicles of Darkness updated this into a 3x3 grid. Across the three columns (Physical, Social, Mental,) you had three rows: Power, Finesse, Resistance.
Physical power is Strength, physical finesse is Dexterity, physical resistance is Stamina. That didn't change.
Social power is Charisma, social finesse is Manipulation, and social resistance is Composure.
Mental power is Intelligence, mental finesse is Wits, and mental resistance is Resolve.
Willpower is now the sum of Resolve and Composure. Stamina and size (5 by default) continues to determine Health.
5
u/PathOfTheAncients 11h ago
Yeah, I know WoD attributes aren't that original seeming now days but when it came out that and the 7/5/3 spread at character creation felt really innovative and elegant.
6
u/Pariahdog119 D20 / 40k / WoD • Former Prison DM 10h ago
I still like it, and I like the nWoD one more.
And the nWoD one would go a long way to fixing most of Scion's problems (no epic resistances)
2
7
u/aslum 12h ago
In mothership (A Science Fiction horror rpg) you have plenty of standard skills/attributes. However there's no skill for stealth/hiding. The way this affects play has been widely praised, and is generally considered pretty clever.
Sometimes what "isn't there" can inform a narrative more than what is.
2
u/Top-Jacket-6210 12h ago
Tell me more about how stealth works in tbos game please.
9
u/NoRaptorsHere 16h ago
Oh god, why is every line its own spoiler!?
32
2
10
u/Hungry-Cow-3712 Other RPGs are available... 15h ago
I've yet to find a game that has its core theme as hard-baked into its stats as 3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars. It has two. Fighting Ability covers all kinds of armed and unarmed combat from fists to man-portable artillery. Non-Fighting Ability covers every other conceivable action you might take, including some indirect combat options like calling in air strikes.
7
u/JaskoGomad 15h ago
Trollbabe had, IIRC, a single stat called "Trollbabe".
It's the first of the single-stat games, AFAIK.
5
u/Hungry-Cow-3712 Other RPGs are available... 14h ago
Possibly in the revised edition. In the version I have it's just called Number.
2
5
u/serow081reddit 15h ago
My favourite is still the 6 Base Heroes in D20 Modern being named after each of the D&D stats:
Strong, Fast, Tough, Smart, Dedicated, Charismatic
4
u/Vaslovik 12h ago
I like how Traveller made your physical attributes do double duty as your hit points. It's a fairly standard array of attributes, but getting hurt rapidly turns into a death spiral as you attributes (and the skill modifers they give you) start going down. It's a powerful incentive to avoid a fight, or make sure the odds are in your favor if you must fight.
18
u/Legatharr 15h ago edited 7h ago
Disco Elysium's system did not start out as a ttrpg. Elysium, the setting, started out as the setting for various ttrpg campaigns, and they used the D20 Modern Advanced Dungeons & Dragons system. The D20 Modern system uses the same attribute spread as dnd since it literally is a genre-neutral version of dnd.
Disco Elysium's spread aren't really usable for ttrpgs. The skills are specifically chosen to represent the exact kind of person the protagonist is, and so can't be transplanted into any game. Even taking inspiration is difficult, since they assume the same pre-generated character will be used for every player.
edit: I have no idea how I mixed up D20 Modern with ADND, but I did
4
4
u/Spartancfos DM - Dundee 12h ago
You could absolutely use it.
The goal is to create your own set of esoteric skills to represent your character.
1
u/burivuh2025 7h ago
do you have any source on that? I was trying to find credible info on the exact details of the systems they used and was not successful.
2
u/Legatharr 7h ago
I don't know where I got D20 Modern into my head. It was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Predates D20 Modern by a while. D20 Modern didn't even exist when they were playing.
Anyway, you can see one source for AD&D here
5
u/KazM2 14h ago
Cortex / Smallville's Values. Rather than standard descriptors of physical or mental capability it represents how much a certain topic/theme matters to your character. You have Duty: d10? Then honoring your duty is extremely central to the character. Each value is also tied to a Statement, the opinion your character has regarding it and what informs their actions.
I've had limited experience with the system but it seems to play well just requires a restructure in how you approach things.
3
u/Sknowman 12h ago
I'm surprised I haven't seen Blades in the Dark mentioned. You don't have attributes in the normal sense. Instead, you have categories of skills (the category is called an attribute). For each skill that you have at least 1 point, that attribute is increased by 1. You typically only roll skills when you do things; attributes are used for resisting things done to you.
3
4
u/BerennErchamion 13h ago
What about Honey Heist!
You have a complex plan to steal honey. You are also a bear.
The attributes are BEAR and CRIMINAL. You roll Bear when doing Bear things, you roll Criminal when doing not-Bear/Criminal things. They go from 1 to 6.
If your plans fail, you move a point from Criminal to Bear. When your plans work, you move a point from Bear to Criminal. If your Criminal score reaches 6, you are lured into a life of crime, betrays the party and you lose your character. If your Bear score reaches 6, you become a full on bear, flip out and also loses your character.
2
2
u/Ephsylon 14h ago
These are cool in DE because it's all automated and it's not like I'd go "Can I Savoir Faire to duck into cover?" on pen and paper game.
2
u/IkeIsNotAScrub 13h ago
I know the game is controversial because of its production history, but if you like Disco Elysium's skills, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies is a genuine improvement in my opinion. The major skill categories tie into the game's health and advantage/disadvantage systems in a neat way. They also make the wise choice to cut Disco Elysium's 24 skills down to 15, which in my experience makes each skill more relevant in play.
If you're looking for game design inspiration, Zero Parades is definitely doing more mechanically as a game for you to draw from, but is still a fairly simple 2d6 roll over DC skill system.
2
u/aslum 12h ago
The Amber diceless RPG had players bid to be highest ranked in the attributes. The attributes themselves weren't anything particularly innovative - but only one person could have the highest Strength or Endurance - and it was very unlikely you could be best at more than one thing. Though also ranking could change during the course of play.
2
u/LonePaladin 12h ago
There's an old RPG from the mid-'90s called "Immortal: Invisible War" that took the interesting tack of making the base attributes diegetic.
Like many RPGs, it has six attributes -- and they color-coded them, resolve is red, force is orange, expertise is yellow, movement is green, awareness is blue, and resilience is violet. In-game, characters have a "halo" that is a manifestation of their power and potentially visible to other characters; they have "motes" in this halo that indicate what they're good at. Core stats are called "forte" and are essentially your default numbers, while immortals also have "free-floating" motes that can be reassigned on the fly or used to power magical abilities.
F'rinstance, you might have 4 in your green Movement stat, which defines how quickly you can walk or run. But if you need to eke out some extra speed and have some free-floating motes, you could add a couple to it and suddenly be able to run faster. It's possible to have a character who could perceive others' haloes and therefore see what their stats are.
When you try to do something that calls for dice, you're encouraged to use dice that match the colors of the stats involved. So firing a gun would rely on your Expertise so you'd use a yellow die to hit, but if you were doing so in fog you would also add a blue die (because that would impact your Awareness).
2
u/PremierJoshua 12h ago
In OpenD6, your are encouraged to make your own attributes. The core attributes are: Strength, Endurance, Reflexes, Dexterity. The game suggests that Endurance can be folded into Strength. These three-four core attributes are used by all the core rules. Because the game is setting and genre neutral, you can add any attributes to suit anything. Example: adding Magic, Tech, Intellect, Personality, Will, etc. It also suggests renaming the attributes to suit your campaign. Strength could be power, etc.
2
u/PsionicKitten 8h ago
While completely uninspired for the attributes, I found the way Fatima Ultima makes every roll a combination of two attributes (which could be the same or different) was a neat spin on the idea of how attributes contribute to certain things, especially in a system that didn't have separate skill ranks.
2
u/ThePiachu 8h ago
Fellowship for the Overlord. They are GM controlled BBEG and they don't have regular stats, just big statements about their powers that are absolute truths. They can be impervious to all harm, unbeatable in combat, richer than anyone in the world, etc. The game revolves around knocking out those truths to be able to beat them.
2
u/JKNT 8h ago edited 8h ago
In Undying, you're a vampire hunting humans and beefing with other vampires but it's a diceless game so there's not much in the way of attributes. But the one attribute your character inherently has is HUMANITY, which fluctuates based on how you act and play.
Humane: You need and cultivate meaningful relationships with prey (humans).
Callous: You might maintain casual relationships with prey, but generally view prey as pawns to be manipulated in your nightly games of chess.
Monstrous: You detest or otherwise avoid relationships with prey.
Lost: Sort of game over because you're lost to bloodlust.
A Monstrous character is 50% stronger (stores more blood to fuel actions) than a Humane character. But you truly have to play it monstrously or you'll lose that stat, and drop down to being Callous.
But then the interesting part as well is - when you're Humane and you feed on a human, you get to take lots of measures to ensure the human is unaware, not in pain, etc. vs when you're Monstrous, you don't care. Your victim might suffer and there'll be obvious signs that they've been attacked by a vampire.
So there's lots in the game to really let you play the social behaviour more than the mechanical advantage. And vice versa, lots of people might want to play as the 'nice vampire' but in a predatory community of vampires that's a real sign of weakness.
The other 'attributes' are equally cool systems:
Your social status in the vampire hierarchy, from Princeps to Patrician to Plebeian to Pariah.
Your claim to your own hunting grounds, with different levels of how abundant the prey are, how vigilant the humans are towards vampires, and how close you are to the centre of the action.
2
u/HalcyonHorizons 14h ago
S.P.E.C.I.A.L from Fallout.
Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck
2
u/JaskoGomad 15h ago
Kill Puppies for Satan. The stats told you everything you needed to know about your character. They were:
Cold, Hard, Fucked Up, and Mean.
1
u/creepig is powered by the apocalypse 9h ago edited 9h ago
Vincent Baker did a lot of experiments with interesting stats in the games he wrote before Apocalypse World. Poison'd derived your skills from the stats Devil, Ambition, Brutality, and Soul, and you'd subtract one from another. It forced you to vary your stats, because having even stats made you absolute dogshit at everything.
Dogs in the Vineyard also had some great ideas, but ultimately both games suffered a lot from being experiments with interesting but unplayable systems.
2
u/Pseudonymico 8h ago
Dogs is a very playable system, it's just focused on a specific kind of game.
2
u/creepig is powered by the apocalypse 7h ago
Dogs is a very playable setting, but the raise and call system is clunky and hard to play.
1
u/JaskoGomad 6h ago
I’ve had great times playing DitV.
1
u/creepig is powered by the apocalypse 3h ago
But was that because of the setting or because of the system? I've had great times playing Curse of Strahd but that doesn't make 5e any less of a terrible system for horror
1
u/JaskoGomad 2h ago
System. It really makes escalation a risky choice. It really asks if a chance of winning is worth what it may cost.
2
u/Prestigious-Gas-9726 13h ago
In HoL
- Greymatta: Intellectual capacity (if any)
- Meat: Physical strength
- Feets: Dexterity
- Mouth: Charisma
- Nuts: Spiritual resolve
2
u/Temporary_Stranger39 15h ago
- Logic (deduction and rational conclusions)
- Encyclopedia (factual knowledge about the world)
- Rhetoric (debate, persuasion, and spotting flawed logic)
- Drama (lying, acting, and detecting deceit)
- Conceptualisation (art, abstract ideas, and pattern recognition)
- Visual Calculus (reconstructing crime scenes and spatial physics)
Those are all skills, not what is generally meant by attributes.
2
u/BrobaFett Nu-SR, SWRPG, FL, 4D RP 15h ago
It’s all imperfect. There is an underlying aptitude to all of these skills that is “unlearned”
1
u/Temporary_Stranger39 15h ago
These are primarily leaned skills. People proficient in them have trained or learned them. One doesn't just get born with them.
1
u/BrobaFett Nu-SR, SWRPG, FL, 4D RP 14h ago
I think the number is too bulky for my taste. But I’ve always had a lot of respect for the chronicles of darkness system.
Nine attributes. Three physical (strength, dexterity, stamina), three social (presence, manipulation, composure) , three intellectual (intelligence, wits, resolve). One representing power, one finesse, and finally resistance. So, social attributes might have presence (social power, charisma), manipulation (social finesse), and composure.
I also like Forbidden Lands. 4 attributes. Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy.
1
u/Sjksprocket 13h ago
Not quite what you’re asking, but I liked how the original Deaflands rpg generated stats. You drew cards off a deck of playing cards and die type was based of the card face and the number of dice rolled was based on the suit of the card face.
1
u/Snorb 13h ago
Prose Descriptive Qualities and its sister game PDQ# have what I think is a really good handling for stats: Anything that could describe your character is a stat.
That means you can have Impossibly Hot Redhead, Grilled Cheese Chef, and Really Good at Holding My Breath as stats you can roll. This requires you, of course, to actually explain how being a very good-looking redhead helps you in combat, though.
(The games also ask what it means when these stats improve. Did you get better makeup? Did you buy better cheeses?)
1
u/Shaky_Balance 12h ago
I haven’t played it but Roll for Shoes is pretty clever. Your skills determines the number of dice you roll, but you only start with one skill “Do anything: 1, but get to add new skills when you roll all 6s. So you dynamically build a character through play in a pretty elegant way. It came up on the This Should Be A Game podcast as a potential system for a time loop game where I think it would really be good for representing a normal person getting better at highly specific things as they loop and keep learning.
1
u/Gofer_Team_Studios 12h ago
I have attributes in my system but their values are based on your skill levels.
Leveled up your Athletics skill? Congratulations your movement speed, physical damage bonus and combat encumbrance is higher.
Leveled up your Fortitude skill? You can now utilize more magic, have more HP and augment your body more.
Leveled up your Will & Mind? Your HP increases and you can augment your body more.
Not to toot my own horn too much but i find it to be a more elegant solution despite being a bit more crunchy. Provides the players a lot more freedom as well.
1
u/Maldevinine 10h ago
Wildsea's Wild Words system has attributes, but they don't have numbers. Your attributes are a series of ways that you typically approach problem solving. They tie into the descriptions for how you do things and (when they work) make you think more about why and how your character does things.
1
u/EsraYmssik 10h ago
Toon had:
Muscle
Zip
Smarts
Chutzpah
Yesterday’s Tomorrow "Pulp Edition" (by John Wick) had:
Action!
Science!
Romance!
Mystery!
My Life With Master had:
Self Loathing
Weariness
Love
1
u/CarpeBass 9h ago
I've always been fond of the set used in ECLIPSE PHASE 1st edition:
Cognition (COG) is your aptitude for problem solving, logical analysis, and understanding. It also includes memory and recall. Test it to: Recall a memory, memorize a number, or resist mental manipulation.
Coordination (COO) is your skill at integrating the actions of different parts of your morph to produce smooth, successful movements. It includes manual dexterity, fine motor control, nimbleness, and balance.
Intuition (INT) is your skill at following your gut instincts and evaluating on the fly. It includes physical awareness, cleverness, and cunning. Test it to: Evaluate a situation, see through an illusion, or grok alien intentions.
Reflexes (REF) is your skill at acting quickly. This encompasses your reaction time, your gut-level response, and your ability to think fast. Test it to: Catch a thrown object, balance, avoid blinding glare, or stop yourself from falling.
Savvy (SAV) is your mental adaptability, social intuition, and proficiency for interacting with others. It includes social awareness and manipulation. Test it to: Evaluate a social situation, express empathy, follow etiquette, or resist social manipulation.
Somatics (SOM) is your skill at pushing your morph to the best of its physical ability, including the fundamental utilization of the morph’s strength, endurance, and sustained positioning and motion. Test it to: Exercise brute strength, endure hardships, or break free from grapples.
Willpower (WIL) is your skill for self-control, your ability to command your own destiny. Test it to: Keep your composure, steel your resolve, or resist fear or emotional manipulation.
I know it looks quite conventional, but I really like its symmetry — although they merged Coordination and Reflexes in 2nd edition.
And I feel IN A WICKED AGE deserves a mention: you get 6 stats (covertly, directly, for myself, for others, with love, with violence), and every roll asks you to pick 2 of them.
1
u/The-Magic-Sword 9h ago
I don't know about cleverest, but I'm still partial to the Storypath/Storyteller attributes, in tandem with the dice pool system they do a reasonable job of making more points more desirable without enforcing absolute maximization because while each extra point increases your odds of additional successes, it doesn't do so for that much, and skills/attributes are equally valuable, which lets people 'shore up' a given roll on either side.
It's like, 30-40% of getting an additional success for each one (8, 9, 10 on each d10 in the pool, with 10s being 2), but the DC and the other thresholds above (complications and tricks) have variable costs-- like the base difficulty can be between 0 and 4.
In tandem with the fact that attributes and skills combine in different arrangements depending on the subject of the roll and the verb of the roll-- its just a very good balance of being rewarded for specialization and being rewarded for diversifying.
This is doubly true because of the relatively low base difficulty of rolls, vs. the aggregate impact of tricks and complications, there's a very organic degrees of success system there-- succeeding but taking consequences, affording extra perks attached to the roll, lots of stuff, which further intersects with the mathematical reality I've alluded to above. You can buy an extra point of damage for 3, or avoid a bad consequence that would happen along with your success for 1-3, etc.
It just comes out to a good feeling, because you can get things done with lower stats, but get heavily rewarded for higher stats-- and the party momentum pool even lets you brute force things sometimes (which you get for failure, voluntarily worse failures, and banked from extra successes on rolls, but reset each session.) Getting a lot of successes with a big pool can still be swingy, but getting at least a couple is reliable, its very satisfying in a lot of respects.
1
u/Equivalent_Party706 8h ago
I have a fondness in my heart for Shadowrun 5e's system.
Characters have a fairly typical set of normal attributes (Strength, Agility, Body, Reaction, Intuition, Logic, Willpower, Charisma), plus (optionally) Magic/Resonance, and finally Edge (the thing I'm interested in for this conversation).
Edge is basically luck. You spend it before or after tests to increase your chances or margin of success. You can use it a number of times equal to the stat, and it recuperates at a rate of one per restful day (IIRC the rules say a good meal and a full night's sleep). You can also "burn" edge, permanently reducing your character's edge score by 1 to either access one of the normal edge abilities, or use a few special, even stronger abilities.
It adds a nice degree of reliability for your characters (who are meant to be professional specialists), improves player agency in the face of bad luck, and offers a way to inflict real permenant losses on a player without killing them. It's one of my favorite features of a (not unjustly) controvertial system.
1
u/Jalor218 7h ago
Amber Diceless defines its stats entirely on how the PCs rank in each one, from best to worst, and character generation starts with bidding for them. But you can't bid too much for any given stat, because you need the same pool of points to spend on everything else. If players ask the GM which stat is the most important stat, they're instructed to always answer with the one currently being bid on.
Obviously this doesn't translate directly to games without PvP as the norm, but I still think it's cooler than anything else that's been tried in the subsequent 35 years of RPGs.
1
u/Xararion 6h ago
I'm personally fond of Fate of the Norns / Children of Eriu stat system of Aetts of runes. One Aett is physical (red), one is mental (blue) and one is spiritual (green), with each individual rune further tied to specific abilities in your ability grid. When you take damage you move runes to wounded tracker and can't use them or the abilities they're associated with. On top of that you can use runes as modifiers to other runes based on their colour, so red runes could be used to amplify (double) damage values of an action.
•
u/KalelRChase 1h ago
Risus is pretty elegant. You have Cliches with a rank and that’s it. You are what you are (and that can be almost anything). It cuts out (or rather merges) stats and skills entirely and combines them.
•
u/Nechrube1 1h ago
I'm a big fan of how Risus: The Anything RPG handles attributes. You get 10 dice to spend at character creation, and you make a few clichés; none can start higher than 4.
Your clichés encompass anything and everything that's reasonably expected by them, and they include all of the typically expected 'tools of the trade' within them, so your inventory is very simple too. "Professional Thief (4)" as a cliché tells us a lot about your character and what they have. They are likely quick, acrobatic, sneaky, and maybe have some low-level magic. They almost certainly carry lock picks, several daggers, and a billowing cloak. All those aptitudes, abilities, and gear summed up with two words and a number.
But skill checks take your specific clichés into account. If the GM calls for some feat of strength like lifting a portcullis, the Professional Thief (4) and the Raging Barbarian (4) will have different target numbers to beat (despite the power of their clichés being the same), with a lower target favouring the barbarian as we know from their cliché that they're practically body builders.
Minimal overhead and common sense rulings are the real highlights, and your character fantasy is only limited by your imagination and word choice, rather than "I won't get that signature class ability for 3 more levels."
•
u/StarshipGoldfish 39m ago
Downloading the PDF of Risus off of this recc.
•
u/Nechrube1 13m ago
Awesome! The optional Risus Companion is really useful too, helps you tweak the system and get the most out of it, especially if you're interested in longer form campaigns or managing things like chase scenes. The beauty of it being a really simple system is that it's very hackable.
If you don't want to drop money on the companion, there are loads of community made optional rules and tweaks over at https://www.risusiverse.com/
•
1
-14
15h ago
[deleted]
1
u/Sknowman 12h ago
The very first line in the post gives you context:
Disco Elysium started out as a tabletop RPG
65
u/Tryskhell Blahaj Owner 16h ago
In Motobushido, you have six stats, organized in three paths:
Law Of The Pack : Nomad / Brotherhood
Way Of The Sword : Water / Steel
Code Of The Highway : Will / Destiny
Your total in each path is always 6, which means that if you have Nomad 4, you have Brotherhood 2.
Depending on the situation and your approach, you use either one or the other. For instance, if you fight for yourself, you add a number of cards to your hand equal to your Nomad stat, but if you fight for the pack, you use Brotherhood instead.
What's interesting is that when you level up, and when you accumulate wounds, dishonor etc (as Karmic Stains), your stats change.
This all creates a system that strongly encourages you to play to your character's personality and morality, since the stats essentially represent that more than anything else.