Hello! Still not dead. Been working a lot on my upcoming game. If you’re into precision platformers like Celeste or Super Meat Boy, give it a look 😉 (there’s some links and stuff at the bottom)
Anyways; I was pondering various attributes and skills that would fit in my low fantasy, medieval HRE inquisitor campaign that is next in line for me. I had already decided that Charisma was a Bad Attribute here. It was too vague, too broad, and too D&D. In a setting where position, social class, and social standing plays a large role, I still wanted some attributes to back the various social situations, so I was looking for alternatives.
Setting TL;DR
The players are catholicish witcher-judge-executioner-inquisitor-taxcollectors riding about a faux 1000s HRE countryside of their jurisdiction doing whatever witcher-judge-executioner-inquisitor-taxcollectors do. Monsters and magic are relatively subdued and drawn from era-appropriate folklore.
The Attributes
After letting the idea ferment in the back of my brain for a few weeks, it ended up something like this:
Empathy
Empathy, to some degree, takes the place of regular persuasion. It is your ability to read, understand, and use your own and others’ emotions. Pathos, if you will. It is used when connecting with someone emotionally, and understanding their side. Empathy is used for invoking friendship, mercy, and understanding, but also when reading another’s thinking.
Authority
Authority is your social “strength” so to speak. Acting from a position of power – whether social or physical – and inspiring confidence, fear, or obedience in others. Where Empathy makes people open up to you, Authority allows you you to somewhat supersede their emotions. A soldier inspired by a strong leader might be able to put aside fear in favor for trust that the commander knows best. In keeping with the parallel, Authority might be matched with Ethos.
Wits
Perhaps the attribute with the most lacking name, Wits is the ability to think fast and speak faster. It’s the clever part of your social skills, used for fast talking or conning people, quick retorts, scathing insults, and on-the-fly poetry (very important). To complete the triangle, Wits might correspond with Logos. (Having the attributes correspond at least partially with Ethos, Logos, and Pathos was not planned, but something I noticed later, interestingly.)
What do they do?
These three attributes should allow for various social/emotional archetypes to be represented and differentiated:
– gruff but competent
– clever but callous
– shy, soft but warm and understanding
– etc…
And various combinations thereof.
The goal is to move away from the “leave the talking to the guy who rolled 16 CHA” while not moving to the “no stats, only IRL charisma” that is sometimes used or appropriate.
Coupled with both the three estates (nobility, clergy, and the rest) and ranking within and between them, hopefully this would make for a more involved social system. While the players may be the agents of the church/state, their legal power is far from limitless, forcing them to use various approaches to get to the bottom of whatever situation they find themselves in.
If skills are added on top, it would likely not result in 1:1 mappings from attributes to skills. A Falsehood skill might be used with Wits when you are running a talking your way out of a situation, with Authority when impersonating a high-ranking individual, and with Empathy when attempting to scam someone’s grandma.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE VIDEO GAME?!
I am indeed about to release a video game – in less than two weeks! A few years in the making from both me and my co-creator, it is a physics-inspired platformer called Alkali. The game is, if I say so myself, pretty good. There’s several gameplay videos to look at, and a demo too if you wanna give it a go before it’s out.
Save vs. Hollowing 