Bonus Content - The Trait System

Hey everyone!

I promised that the first bonus content this month would cover some changes I’m making to the skill system. So, I’ve given something of an overview for those changes below, including my rationale for departing from a traditional numbers-and-checks system, the basics of what I’m doing instead, and how I expect these changes to influence the game.

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Rationale

Generally-speaking, stories of this nature have some form of statistics, and those statistics are usually in the form of “skills” and “relationships.” A skill statistic is something that you build up by making choices in the game, and it is later “checked” against some number the game developer sets as the threshold for success. If your number is over that number, you succeed the check, and you get some variation on the result that indicates as much. If your number is below that number, you fail the check, and you get some other variation on the result.

Let’s call this a numbers-and-checks system, or perhaps just a Numerical System (NS). There’s plenty of room for nuance and experimentation in an NS; some of them are very fun. I, for one, play a lot of tabletop roleplaying games, and numbers and checks are the bread and butter of a lot of the most beloved systems in that genre. It’s natural in some ways to use an NS in making a game like this, because the number is the result of players choosing to do something, and so the differing results, too, are a result of player choice. This makes it feel like decisions matter, and can reward players who pay careful attention to their numbers and the options they’re presented in any given situations. At its best, this will feel virtually indistinguishable from just roleplaying the character; a thief is more likely to pick a lock than try to break down the door, after all, so it makes sense that her sleight of hand skill would be high, and she’s likely to pass such a check.

But, there’s a couple of problems here.

First of all, when your thief rolls a check in a tabletop roleplaying game, where the NS style of play really shines, she can also fail. There’s tension, even when a character is doing what she’s best at, and failure is a natural part of the game, something that often presents new and interesting avenues of storytelling. This is in part, of course, because such checks involve the roll of a die, but that isn’t the only reason. The other reason is that there’s a Game Master there, a live human who is working with their players to tell a story. With a good Game Master, failure is a setback, but also an opportunity, to find a different solution or to pull back and rethink the approach, or any number of other things. It’s wide open.

IF games, of course, can only pretend to have Game Masters. There can only be some push and pull, some sense of collaboration in the storytelling, because, well, the author of an IF can only write so many possibilities. And so as a result, the skill system tends to become flattened out. A static value is checked against a static difficulty, for 2-3 different possible results. And ‘failure’ tends to feel a lot worse, for a lot of reasons but at least in part because it tends to lead to a definitively worse result, without much chance for the “wait, but what if…?” of a tabletop game. In turn, some players, used to the concept of a “good” or “golden” ending, or a “perfect” run of a game, get caught up in making sure their numbers are exactly what they need to be, and the game’s choices become about changing those numbers rather than roleplaying, in order to achieve the “best” possible result.

There are a lot of ways to minimize or prevent this, and of course to a certain extent, you may just not be able to. There will always be players who want the “perfect” run, and that’s okay. But, as a rule, this is not the experience a game developer is going for, and we certainly don’t want to incentivize it for the players who might otherwise play the game as a (hopefully) rewarding RP experience.

My solution has up until now been to encourage people to view even the stat checks they don’t pass as interesting story developments, and to try to write them as that. Failed checks in the fight with Alcyoneus on the Hades route, for example, may involve sections of the orchard being destroyed, which gives the PC the opportunity to be a part of fixing them later. But, perhaps understandably, most people still view this as a failure, and prefer the “success” state of saving the orchard from all but minimal damage. Part of the fault for this is mine: I didn’t write enough about the potential fixing, and so it’s not a proper branch, just something mostly left implied, and even then only if you happen to have the right job. But part of it is also these other considerations.

So, my new solution is to make a “perfect” run—that is, one where absolutely everything goes the best it possibly could for an idealized character at all times—impossible. The hope is that in doing this, I’ll be also adding fun RP elements to the story, and opportunities for who the PC is and what they’re good at to affect the story in different, significant ways. No run will be perfect, but every run will have places where the PC really gets to shine, and save the day, and I hope that will make for a much more RP-centric experience, where people feel free to explore the options that sound interesting to them, not the ones that will guarantee later success based on the build they’re going for.

So here’s how I’m trying this.

The Trait and Drawback System

On the surface, I don’t think the Trait System I’m using looks all that different from a Numerical System.

Essentially, at character creation, the player picks two “traits” for their character, that represent things they’re especially good at, and one “drawback” that represents a weakness of theirs, roughly but not quite the inverse of a trait option they didn’t choose.

The trait options are: Magically-Gifted, Learned, Athletic, Intuitive, and Charming. Other than Intuitive, which is new, the others basically correspond to the previously-extant statistics Deific Power, Erudition, Physicality, and Persuasiveness.

The drawback options are Magically-Stunted, Dull, Clumsy, Oblivious, and Blank-Faced. They essentially represent a particular weakness corresponding to one of the traits. Blank-Faced, for example, means people tend to find the character difficult to read or unnerving to talk to, which is sort of the opposite of charming, but it’s flavored in a specific way, rather than just being generically “uncharming.” All of the drawbacks are more specific than the traits, even though Magically-Stunted doesn’t sound like it from the name alone. They’re weaknesses, but they’re also RP opportunities, and a chance to flavor game text when they might become relevant.

You might quite justifiably think that all I’ve really done here is turn stats into booleans (true-false type variables) instead of numbers. To some extent… that’s kind of true. There’s a benefit to this in that there’s no way to make all the traits true, and the player has to live with the fact that they can’t do everything perfectly in the game. But that’s sort of… not what I’m aiming for, either. I don’t want to punish players and make them feel bad. The goal is to make a more responsive RP experience that hopefully has people checking their stats screens less, not cause misery in my players!

Which brings us to the final topic of this little ramble.

Implementation

So, how do I make a system that doesn’t allow for perfect success all the time feel natural and intuitive rather than punishing?

I think the key is twofold: first, in establishing expectations for what’s possible and what isn’t, and then in making having traits always feel like a bonus. They shouldn’t be necessary to get a good result, but it’s probably okay if they’re necessary to get a great one. The player needs to have enough power over their situation that their choices feel meaningful, and also like they can succeed at what they want to do, if they work at it or are clever about it or whatever else.

No one should feel like they go into a Giant fight doomed to fail, even if they’re Magically-Stunted and don’t have the Athletic trait, either. They should still be able to contribute something meaningful, either through one of their other traits, or through thinking the situation through and making an RP choice that can change the trajectory of how things are going, for better or for worse. And, importantly, if they do change it for worse, it should also make things interesting.

So as I go forward and adjust the story to fit the new system, there are a couple of principles I’m keeping in mind.

1. Players should be able to get an outcome that feels satisfying in any situation, even if it’s not a strong area for their character.
2. Any negative consequences an outcome introduces should be interesting, not simple “failures.”
3. Traits should provide opportunities to shine. Using a trait in a situation should never make things worse.
4. Having drawbacks should, at least sometimes, make things worse, but it shouldn’t do so in a way the player can’t overcome.
5. Choices should be structured so that only very rarely is complete success or complete failure possible. Most results should be mixed in interesting ways, where some people will prefer one result and some a different result, so as to avoid the idea that there are “right” and “wrong” choices (this is, after all, only moving the problem of having the “right” stats slightly sideways).
6. What were formerly chances to earn stat points should now be RP choices with different sorts of benefits. Information, time with different characters, items, or possible unconventional solutions to later problems.
7. Traits should not only be relevant when it comes to solving problems. Interactions are going to look different for an Intuitive character than an Oblivious one. Combinations of traits and drawbacks suggest (but do not determine!) personality types, and if someone plays an Athletic, Charming, Dull character, they should have opportunities available to be the himbo/herbo/thembo they clearly want to be!

I’m hoping that keeping all of these design principles in mind as I’m going through and making adjustments will make having traits (and yes, even drawbacks!) feel like fun, and encourage exploration through RP and multiple playthroughs, rather than encouraging people to spend half their time on the stats screen, worrying if their Persuasiveness is really high enough to help Eurydice or if they should try the option that seems a bit more like Erudition, even though it’s maybe not what their character would say.

Conclusion

I hope this has given you a much clearer idea of what I’m about with the redesign. The overall goal is a sleeker, simpler system that actually affects the game more, and more interestingly, than the current Numerical System does. Part of my overall goal for this round of edits is to make the game feel more responsive, and this is certainly a level on which it should be responsive.

In particular, I think having Traits show up more often outside of problem-solving will help them feel more like roleplay elements, and encourage people to really get into their characters rather than worrying so much about success and failure.