Creative and Expressive Play - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 118

of an aircraft, while current airspeed is a status attribute. For the purposes of creative
play, we're interested in the characterization attributes.

You have probably heard of the six characterization attributes used in Dungeons &
Dragons : strength, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, charisma, and constitution. Each
of these attributes affects a character's ability to perform certain actions in the
game: fight, cast magic spells, charm others, withstand poisons, and many other
tasks. When a Dungeons & Dragons player creates a character, she receives a certain
number of points (usually obtained by rolling dice) to distribute among these attri-
butes. How she distributes them—giving more to dexterity and less to intelligence,
for instance—establishes the character's strengths and weaknesses. These strengths
and weaknesses, in turn, determine how the player must play with the character to
be successful in the game: taking advantage of the strengths and avoiding situa-
tions in which the weaknesses render the player vulnerable.

When a player sets the characterization attributes of her character, the player
defines herself in a creative way. Hardcore players, whose main interest is in win-
ning, tend to look for the setting that gives them the greatest advantage in the
game—that is, to optimize the attributes' influence on the core mechanics. Casual
players either don't worry about the assignments much, or they select settings that
allow for interesting role-playing. A character who is highly charismatic but physi-
cally weak, for example, has to be played quite differently from a conventional
warrior.

NOTE If the player's
choice of avatar or
attribute settings
will have an effect on
the gameplay, you
must make the con-
sequences of those
choices reasonably
clear to the player. If
you require the player
to make this decision
before play begins,
either all choices
must provide an equal
chance of winning
(even if the fastest way
to win varies from one
choice to another),
or you should clearly
mark the choices that
make the gameplay
easier or harder. Don't
force your players to
choose an avatar or set
its attributes without
telling them how those
choices will affect their
chances of winning.

If you allow players to assign any legitimate value to their functional attributes,
some players will set up their attributes in the best possible configuration, and the
game will be very easy for them. Many designers don't like this, because they see
the players as their opponents. However, that's a bad reason to disallow it; your
goal is to entertain the player, not to oppose him. However, you can legitimately
prevent the players from maximizing all their attributes if it might introduce bugs
into your game or make the game difficult to test. Instead, consider the following
approaches:

Give players a fixed or random number of points to assign among all their attri-
butes, as in Dungeons & Dragons . This allows them to make interesting choices and
create an avatar who reflects their own personality or fantasies without unbalanc-
ing the game. If you generate a random number of points for the player, use a
nonuniform distribution as Dungeons & Dragons does in order to avoid producing
unusually strong or weak characters. See “Random Numbers and the Gaussian
Curve” in Chapter 10.

Include a set of default, or recommended, settings so players who want to get
started quickly can do so without spending a lot of time setting attributes. This is
especially valuable for players who don't understand how the attributes affect the
gameplay anyway. They will find it frustrating to be required to set attributes when
they don't know how the attributes affect the game and all they want to do is get
into the game and start playing. They will appreciate being given a reasonable default.