FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION

Character Attributes

There isn't space in this book to give any more than a general introduction to implementing characters in CRPGs. If you haven't played any kind of role-playing game before, take a look at the Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook (Wizards RPG Team, 2008) for an introduction to how one particular game system describes and designs characters. Although character attributes vary from game to game, many games borrow from, and sometimes expand upon, those in Dungeons & Dragons because they are the oldest and most players are familiar with them.

Remember that in Chapter 5, "Creative and Expressive Play," the section "Self­Defining Play" divides attributes into functional attributes and cosmetic attributes and further subdivided the functional attributes into characterization attributes and status attributes. We'll look into these next.

CHARACTERIZATION ATTRIBUTES

Characterization attributes determine the general abilities and qualities of a charac­ter and change only infrequently; status attributes describe the current state of a character and may change often. Choose attributes for your game based on the actions that you want characters to be able to take. The attributes will determine whether the character can in fact perform those actions and if so, how well, how quickly, how powerfully, and with what probability of success. For instance, in the

Dungeons & Dragons system, the dexterity attribute determines how likely it is that a character will be able to pick someone's pocket without detection.

Here is a brief overview of some particular types of characterization attributes that you may wish to consider:

■ Race is an unfortunate misnomer, as most games (rightly) do not distinguish among the conventional human racial classifications (Caucasian, Native American, South Asian, and so on) except as a cosmetic attribute. In RPGs, race refers to groups of real and fantasy humanoids such as humans, dwarves, elves, giants, and so on. A better term would be species, but race is the term established by conven­tion. Attributes connected with race usually govern the general body type and appearance of a character; they may also imply limits on the upper bounds of his strength or other physical attributes. Some games limit particular races' ability to perform certain types of activities.

■ Sex naturally determines a character's body type and may determine with whom the character may form romantic relationships, if the game includes them. (Many games assume that all their characters are heterosexual; The Sims is an unusual departure in this regard.) Otherwise, sex is almost always a cosmetic attri­bute rather than a functional one.

Do not place restrictions on a character's abilities on the basis of his or her sex, such as limiting the strength of female characters simply because such limits are commonly accepted ideas in the real world. If a player wants to play a six-foot-six woman with the strength of Arnold Schwarzenegger, she should be allowed to. See the sidebar “Should Sex Be a Functional Attribute or a Cosmetic Attribute?” in Chapter 5 for more discussion.

■ Character class is a form of specialization that permits the character to perform certain actions (for instance, the Spellcaster class may perform magic spells), gain particular skills, and improve certain attributes while limiting the growth of oth­ers. The object is to encourage, or even require, the player to create specialized rather than generalized characters. This in turn compels the player to set up a bal­anced party containing a mixture of character classes, which is an additional challenge. Effectively, a character's class determines his role in the party. Typical classes include fighters, spellcasters, thieves (with special stealth abilities), and cler­ics (with special healing abilities). You can undoubtedly think of others.

While character class is a traditional feature of tabletop RPGs, it is not essential, and it sometimes produces absurdities, such as a wizard whose class restrictions prevent him from using a kitchen knife. Not all games use character classes. If you want to implement classes, it would be better to define them in terms of limits on a character's ability to improve certain skills rather than absolute prohibitions on certain activities.

■ Physical attributes such as height, weight, strength, dexterity, endurance, max­imum speed, maximum health, and so on determine how a character performs while moving, carrying weight, and during combat. Armor class is a commonly used physical attribute that contributes to the formula that determines whether a character will be hit by an enemy attack; it is roughly equivalent to defensive dodging in war games.

■ Mental attributes such as intelligence and sanity affect the character's ability to learn or reason and to withstand disturbing or horrifying situations. Because a player may be more (or less) intelligent than his character is, it's difficult to enforce intelligence except by fiat. Some game systems use intelligence levels to place limits on the ability to cast certain kinds of magic spells.

■ Moral attributes determine the character's attitudes toward justice and exploit­ing others; in simple terms, the extent to which he is good or evil. It might be worthwhile to design a more subtle system of morality, however. Some people who think nothing of stealing wouldn't dream of abusing an animal—and vice versa.

■ Social attributes determine a character's social attitudes and ability to get along with others. Examples might be charismatic, nurturing, or leadership abilities. You might also use social attributes to describe such things as a character's degree of xenophobia or his conversational skill. When a character engages in conversations, you can design the dialog engine so that it does not give an inarticulate character as many things to say as a more articulate character.

Some games—for example, in the case of the Fallout series—allow the player to establish the values of a primary set of characterization attributes, then calculate the values of a second set based on those in the primary set. In Fallout 3 (and its predecessors), the primary set of attributes includes strength, perception, endur­ance, charisma, agility, intelligence, and luck. The secondary set of attributes includes hit points (that is, maximum possible health, calculated from strength and endurance), armor class (based on agility), and so on. The Fallout series has particularly well-designed core mechanics.

STATUS ATTRIBUTES, EXPERIENCE, AND CHARACTER LEVELS

In CRPGs, a character's status attributes typically identify the character's location, health, state of needs (like a need for food or rest), relationships with other charac­ters, inventory of items owned or carried, and any other value that may change from moment to moment.

Among the most commonly implemented status attributes are two related ones that effectively measure the character's growth: experience points, often abbreviated XP, and character level. Experience points are earned by successfully defeating ene­mies in combat and by other activities that the designer feels represent important achievements in the context of the game's story. Usually these consist of complet­ing quests or conducting successful negotiations with NPCs via dialog. In a tabletop RPG, XP are awarded by the game master; in a CRPG, they are awarded by the com­puter when it detects a particular event.

Do not reduce the fighting ability of a character because she has low health. This is gen­erally a bad idea in strategy games; for RPGs, it is a design rule, because the number of characters that the player controls is smaller and the consequences are more damaging. If you penalize wounded characters, whoever gets in the first solid blow in a fight has a big advantage. See the section “Health, Morale, and Fighting Efficiency” in Chapter 14, “Strategy Games,” for further discussion.

Typically, XP have no intrinsic value and cannot be traded for anything else; they are simply a measure of progress, almost like a score. However, when a character achieves a certain level of XP, the character's level goes up a notch. The thresholds are sometimes determined by the character's class. Achieving a new character level (called leveling up) usually gives the player an opportunity to raise one or more of his characterization attributes. In many games, the player earns a certain number of points, often two or three, that he can add to whichever characterization attri­butes he is most interested in improving.

If you implement character classes with different thresholds for leveling up, you should make this clear to the player before he has to commit himself to a given class.

COSMETIC ATTRIBUTES

Because part of the appeal of role-playing is the ability to play as a character of one's own design, CRPGs often have a great many cosmetic attributes. They add variety but don't influence the gameplay. Cosmetic attributes include such things as hair, skin, and eye color; facial features and body shapes within a particular race; clothing and jewelry that doesn't function as armor or have magic powers; tattoos, piercings, and other body modifications; and talismans, pets, or other distinctive objects that a person might keep nearby, such as Indiana Jones's hat. In online role­playing games, rare examples of such objects are highly sought after and command high prices within the game economy, even if they serve no function in the game's combat challenges. Cosmetic attributes add richness to the play experience; the more of them that you can afford, the better—although they are not a substitute for good gameplay.