Design Feature III: Expanding on Character Aspects

Welcome back once again to Ashe’s feature on designing your own game system.

So far we’ve talked about the fundamental aspects of a game system (Action Resolution, Effect Resolution and Special Cases) as well as the basics of character aspect designs and how they relate to the action resolution method of system design.

In this section, I’m going to try and deviate a bit from the hard technicalities of system design and talk a bit more about personal choice in character aspects. To do this, we must first analyze both the setting and focus of the game and the character as an individual.

First, you should begin putting some serious thought into the nature of your game setting. If you are looking into making a generic game, you will have to be considering all possible settings. Personally, in my experience, it is far better when starting out to choose a setting to focus on rather than beginning with all at once. Thing is, you can always expand on the system later. Building with the the generic system in mind may seem preemptive, but in reality may also cause you to overcomplicate and over-consider
when designing. If you want a fantasy setting then you will have different considerations for aspects and characters than you would for science fiction (high sci-fi, as in Herbert’s Dune or the works of Philip K. Dick). Also, you have to consider subject matter and themes in these designs. Why? Consider that campaigns that draw quite a bit of horror influence should consider fear and psychology beyond that of a standard resistance to terror effects. Such a theme might require the consideration of psychological
derangement. How much drama do you want the game to focus on?

Second, you need to look at what makes a character, a created individual, tick. Or what in your mind does and how you want your game system to reflect this. In the last feature, we talked about core attributes (Primal Aspects in seven13 terms) and the necessity of relating them to the character’s skills, but how far do you go beyond there?

The first consideration to creating a system of character aspects is classification. In a sense, every viable, usable thing of any sort that can relate to a character taking action, receiving effects or modifying outcomes can be an aspect. This goes far beyond the core aspects of the character and may even include aspects which actually represent trained specific or unique things the character is able to do. As an example of this last, Dungeons and Dragons employs a system of Feats, which are learned by characters
and can add modifiers to many actions. This type of system is essential to D&D’s target number method of system design. At the inverse lies the dice-pool method, which should include far less dice-pool modifying factors as one does not want the character to be rolling an entire bag of dice for a single action outcome. With a percentile system, such modifying aspects can be use to increase or decrease the character’s percentage by a slight margin.

So, the key here is determining how you wish to classify character aspects and how you wish to consider working them into your game system design. Let’s take a look at some different possible classifications for aspects:

Core Attributes/Aspects are those centralized aspects that you will expect all playable characters, or even NPCs in your game, to possess. Strength, Agility, Mind or others are examples. You may also wish to classify these into categories, such as Physical Core Aspects, Mental Core Aspects, Social Core Aspects or Supernatural Core Aspects.

Skills or learned talents, represent areas of study, expertise or proficiency in which the character is trained and generally cover a broad range of action rather than that of a specific one, such as that of a combat maneuver. Some examples of skills might be Unarmed or Melee Combat, Acrobatics or Abnormal Psychology. With skills, it is up to you who detailed or in-depth you want your skills to be.
This should, however, reflect your system. If your system will be more in-depth and complex your skills should be as well; the inverse is also true. Either way, your skills should link in some way to the characters core aspects so as not to allow a character with a Dexterity of minimum score to possess an acrobatics of maximum. Such links also allow the character to attempt actions from the range of a skill he may not possess, based solely on his relevant natural skill.

Psychological Aspects refer to aspects of the character that measure or affect his mental well-being. In the classic The Call of Cthulhu, the character’s psychology is represented by a number of Sanity Points, a simplistic but effective system. Psychological aspects may also be only negative and gained as a result of mental trauma, such as Derangements present in the World of Darkness by White Wolf
studios.

Specific Aspects is a term used to refer to very specific use aspects such as combat maneuvers or the Feats present in Dungeons & Dragons. These aspects may be learned as a progression along a path of study or may be racial in nature among any number of factors. Specific Aspects generally fall into the special cases section of system design. In part two, when discussing examples of systems, the
combat maneuvers used by the example characters could be examples of specific aspects.

Supernatural Aspects or powers may refer to specific abilities of the character that set him beyond the mundane, such as the ability to command magic or super powers. Such aspects may be treated as skills or might be handled in a similar fashion to specific aspects. The ability to fly or casting spells from certain schools of magic are examples of supernatural aspects.

Unique Aspects represent special aspects that may modify the character’s actions in a positive or negative way and help make him unique. These are classically called Advantages and Disadvantages in many game system (though we call them Gifts and Frailties in seven13). Unique aspects in any form exist to breathe a bit more life into the character and are often considered themselves special cases in the
system, usually revolving around modifiers to actions or specific role-play functions.

Now, with the exception of Specific and Unique aspects, all of these are aspects that deal almost exclusively with action resolution factors. You must also consider aspects which determine how much physical punishment the character can withstand in combat and other effect resolution considerations, which we will discuss soon.

For now, it is best to begin taking some notes on how you may wish to classify aspects for characters under your system and how they may have an effect on your game mechanic. In my next feature, we will begin to discuss how effect resolution functions in the game system and what methods and devices may work for what types of game mechanics. Beyond that, we will eventually discuss special cases, game balancing, combining
mechanics and overall world and metaplot design. Until then -

– Ashe