Pyramid #3/120: Alternate GURPS V

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

But is the whole "academic intelligence =/= X" just a manifestation of calling the attribute "IQ"?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

But is the whole "academic intelligence =/= X" just a manifestation of calling the attribute "IQ"?

No. The basic assumption is that if two skills are controlled by the same attribute, there's a correlation between those two skills -- someone likely to be good at one is also likely to be good at the other. If the correlation is weak or nonexistent, that suggests that either one of those skills is misclassified, or the attribute doesn't actually exist (there's also the stat normalization option, which assumes that GURPS in general has the relative importance of stat and skill wrong).

[bert]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

A case could be made for replacing Charisma with an Attribute and basing social skills off of it. I seem to recall a previous edition of Alternate GURPS addressing this?

This is what I did in my own system which resembles both GURPS and BRP. The attributes are ST, HT, IQ, DX, PC, WP, CH, AP. The latter four are perception, willpower, charisma and appearance. Ranged weapons are based on PC. Social skills, languages and arts are based on charisma. Reaction rolls are based on appearance.

Still, there is no equivalent to QN, which is why I found this article in pyramid interesting. And like Doug and Kromm are saying, those attributes are still very broad when used as a base for skills... however I doubt if additional complexity to mitigate this is wortwhile.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by bert

This is what I did in my own system which resembles both GURPS and BRP. The attributes are ST, HT, IQ, DX, PC, WP, CH, AP.

I have some old stuff online describing 3e-era experiments along this line. The attributes I played around with were pairings of an attribute with a less-expensive sub-attribute (possibly inspired by Star Frontiers' approach of paired attributes). The two items in a pair would start the same, but the sub-attribute could be bought up or down.

They were:

ST/MAS (Mass; for useful purposes it equated to HP, thus working like ST/HP in 4e)
DX/MDX (Manual Dexterity)
HT/FTG (Fatigue; again, the pair works like 4e does now)
IQ/MSP (Mental Speed; used for any test of quick thinking, including recovery from surprise, and intended to replace Combat Reflexes)
PR/WIL (Presence/Will; essentially Charisma (force of will in influencing others) and Will (force of will in resisting influence))
AW/SAW (Awareness/Self-Awareness)

The last pair needs explanation:

Awareness would be represent awareness of the "outside" (including "unseen") world, acting as Perception does now and replacing IQ for purposes of spells and magical skills, and creative and artistic skills; it'd possibly also work like Empathy somehow.

Self-Awareness would represent "inward" awareness, harmony with the self, etc. – i.e., it'd form the basis for "chi" skills, maybe psionics, probably Intuition-like abilities, and – maybe, if there's some game need – "enlightenment".

I used the first four pairs in a game (I think PR/WIL too; I forget), but I never got around to defining AW/SAW well and didn't use them.

It's all amusing stuff. But 4e, with its more fleshed-out advantages and talents, makes it easier to get similar results without diverging from other people's GURPS games in this most basic of areas.

(Still. Breaking IQ apart to get a separate social attribute, and maybe even a separate "mystical" attribute, remains a tempting idea.)

[bert]

Well, as always it is a question of elegance vs versatility. Having more attributes gives more details in characters by just looking at the numbers; having just four core attributes makes everything simple and elegant. In the end, after playing around with this, I really prefer a smaller set of attributes and fleshing out a character with traits. Which, I guess, is one of the reasons I really like GURPS - simple and elegant at the core, but still with endless possibilities for details.

Tbone, I think your attributes are very interesting.

[johndallman]

I'm a bit mystified by Fluid Skills. It seems to me to be taking a problem that RPGs don't suffer from - inconsistency in character abilities driven by careless scriptwriters - and going to some lengths to recreate the problem.

I get that it's modelling something that's common in scripted media, but is it something that players or GMs actually want?

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I get that it's modelling something that's common in scripted media, but is it something that players or GMs actually want?

Yes, in some cases.

My late friend Mike was fond of the idea of a tool for varying characters so they wouldn't become boringly predictable. He disliked the potential abuse lurking in traits such as Modular Abilities, however, which placed that variability under player control within the course of the same adventure, perhaps even in minutes or seconds. He was seeking a meta-game dramatic tool, not an in-world superpower. As a player, he often proposed "lateral character development": Moving points between skills to reflect a shift in the character's outlook based on recent experiences. Mike was also a fan of serialized pulp stories, where the hero rarely grew more capable but often drifted in focus to keep the series fresh.

Mike and two other friends from the same era (CM and WL) were fond of the idea of character development without character advancement. The three didn't view this the same way, but "lateral character development" was always on the table. Their basic thesis was that players crave advancement not because they want more power but because they don't want to be stuck doing the same thing for many adventures and dozens of game sessions. This was proven to me years later by three other friends (MB, RS, and ST), who were in the habit of retiring old, high-points PCs to create new ones at lower power levels, giving up powerful characters to play less-capable ones who were utterly and completely different.

Based on these experiences, I'm not sure the sole motivation is "modeling scripted media." Of the six players referred to above, only Mike was a fan of serialized fiction of that kind. Of the others, two were motivated by theoretical interests in narratology and dramaturgy, two were digital-games diehards who enjoyed creating "alts" and seeing how the software responded to radically different approaches, and one was motivated by what looked to me like attention deficit.

Of course, it isn't for everyone! Some players do want more power. Some like being secure in the same role for a long time. Many feel that the only legitimate form of character development is character advancement.

I'm on the fence, but I'll point out that I proposed The No-Growth Campaign (GURPS Power-Ups 5: Impulse Buys, p. 19) back in 2012.

[dataweaver]

Cerebral vs. Visceral; thoughts and reason vs. feelings and intuition. Intelligence vs. Wisdom. Mind vs. Soul.

If I were to break IQ up into just two parts to alleviate the “IQ does too much” issue without increasing the number of attributes any more than absolutely necessary, this is the dividing line I'd use. The new trait (which I'll refer to as “EQ” with about as much accuracy as IQ has in describing what it covers) would be the basis for social skills, artistic skills, and mystical skills; Will would be based off of EQ instead of IQ (but see below); Perception would mostly remain with IQ, except for what I term as “insight”: recognizing the emotional or aesthetic significance of a detail. Things like Danger Sense, Intuition, Common Sense, and Empathy would be based on EQ rather than IQ, but would still benefit from increased or reduced Perception — that is, you should be able to “float” Perception from IQ to EQ when perceiving matters such as feelings, aesthetics, or mysticism instead of logic and facts. (I could also see “floating” it to DX for the various targeting skills.)

This still lumps things together more than I'd like, mainly by having Will so closely tied to EQ. To me, that's akin to basing HT off of DX; and my own preference would be to go with six Attributes: ST, HT, DX, IQ, EQ, and Will. Relating this to “The Fifth Attribute”, most of the functions of Quintessence would be handled by EQ; but the ones that deal with how powerful or tough you are rather than how much aptitude you have would be handled by Will: in particular, “Quintessence Points” would be replaced by Will-based “Stress Points” which, in addition to doing everything Quintessence Points do, would also get worn down by Fright Checks and other kinds of emotional stress. As well: Will, not EQ, would be used for supernatural resistance.

I might even go as far as eight, breaking Speed out from DX and forming a new “Focus” Attribute out of parts of Will and IQ: Like Will, Focus would be a mental “power trait”; like IQ, it would be cerebral rather than visceral in nature. Focus would deal with your ability to concentrate amid distractions and to recall pertinent facts: things like Single-Minded, Attentive, Distractible, Short Attention Span, and Eidetic Memory would be governed or replaced by it. As well: in campaigns featuring Sanity-Blasting Fright Checks, it (not Will) would be what you use to cope with Disquiet. Mental attacks would wear down a pool of “Focus Points” rather than Hit Points. A concept I've toyed with but haven't figured out how to implement would be to devise some sort of mental analog to Encumbrance, which would be Focus-based: how much information can you process at once? A computer's Complexity rating would be tied to Focus, not IQ, and might be thought of as the mental analog of the Size Modifier.

So: ST, HT, DX, Speed; Focus, Will, IQ, EQ. I list them in this order because there are parallels: Focus is the mental analog of ST; Will is the mental analog of HT; IQ is the mental analog of DX; and EQ is the mental analog of Speed.

[dataweaver]

Oh: and it probably goes without saying, but I'll stay it anyway. Conditional Injury world very nicely with Knowing Your Own Strength: with ST on a logarithmic scale too, you can determine your Robustness directly instead of having to use a table.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by bert

Well, as always it is a question of elegance vs versatility. Having more attributes gives more details in characters by just looking at the numbers; having just four core attributes makes everything simple and elegant.

At the same time, 18 years of proposals from dozens of authors gradually blew the original model of "ST, DX, IQ, and HT all cost the same, and are the only things you can improve" out into "DX and IQ cost more, and you can directly adjust HP, Will, Per, FP, Basic Speed, and Basic Move." For instance, Per was always there in the form of Alertness, while Extra Hit Points and Increased Speed came later, from different people, and the idea of DX and IQ costing more was an optional rule way back in the days of Roleplayer. To me that suggests that the basic elegance didn't sit all that well with players or writers, who eventually grew four scores into 10 (more, when you throw in Charisma, High Manual Dexterity, etc.) but maintained the illusion of simplicity by treating just four as basic.

As the system's nominal guardian, I'm supposed to be conservative in this regard. As a gamer, I often feel I'd be happier with more attributes. I've put dozens of schemes on paper, but I've never actually tried any of them in play. I tend to come back to something like this:

PHYSICAL

• Strength (ST): Physical strength, but kept on the 1-20 scale so rolls against it make sense. Actual strength would be multiplied by a separate Size trait, which could be real size (as for dwarves and giants) or equivalent size (as for supers). The latter would cost slightly more because it wouldn't come with drawbacks like being easier to hit and see, and needing more expensive armor.
• Agility (AG): A measure of balance and flexibility, governing whole-body movement such as Acrobatics, Dancing, Jumping, and melee combat.
• Dexterity (DX): A measure of manual dexterity, governing fine motor skills in areas like Filch, Leatherworking, Pickpocket, and Sleight of Hand.
• Health (HT): Physical fitness and resistance, pretty much what it is right now.

MENTAL

• Presence (PR): Social intelligence with a catchier name, governing just about any skill that could be seen as social, including not just Influence skills but also stuff like Leadership and Public Speaking.
• Alertness (AL): Awareness of the real world, governing a lot of the same stuff it does right now: Scrounging, Search, Tracking, etc. – but also (and most likely controversially) vehicle operation and ranged combat.
• Intellect (IN): Pure braininess, governing arts, sciences, and technical skills that aren't otherwise the realm of DX or AL.
• Willpower (WL): Mental resistance to fatigue, fear, pain, and PR skills.

SUPERNATURAL

• Power (PW): Raw supernatural ability, limiting such things as damage dice for spells and super abilities, and maximum ST boosts from stuff like Power Blow.
• Awareness (AW): Awareness of the supernatural world, governing spells and abilities for finding and detecting things, plus resistance to supernatural forms of obscuration and illusion.
• Control (CN): Control of supernatural ability, used as the base for success rolls for most spells and abilities that affect the world.
• Resistance (RS): Resistance to being directly controlled or affected by magic, psi, and the like.

FIGURED

• Basic Speed: How quickly you react to changes in the environment. (AG + AL)/4.
• Movement: How fast you walk, run, swim, fly, etc. (AG + HT)/4.
• Hit Points: Same idea as now. (ST + HT)/2, multiplied by the same Size trait that adjusts ST.
• Fatigue Points: Same idea as now, but not used for supernatural gifts. (HT + WL)/2.
• Essence Points: Used instead of FP to power supernatural gifts and absorb supernatural harm. (PW + RS)/2.

It goes without saying that skills would be spread out as much as possible among the attributes, but especially AG, DX, PR, AL, IN, AW, and CN.