#87: What Are Stats Even
I. Dear Reader,
I have a question. Why do we have stats? And let me clarify, so things don’t too get out of hand that I’m mostly interested in “storygames”. I think broadly stats (along with skills) have been our historical answer to the question of how we mechanize who our characters are. They represent the basic identity of the character translated into game terms.
But in storygames, stats can feel vestigial. Like they’re only lingering around because of the weight of past design. Take PbtA games. I almost never think about what stats say about my character in these games. I think about my playbook, moves, bonds - basically, everything else. But when it comes to stats, it just doesn’t matter that much. It really doesn’t say anything about my character. I mean, you could just take them out and I wouldn’t miss them.
And when PbtA games get rid of stats, they tend to replace them with cool alternatives. Pasion de la Pasiones replaced stats with questions. Apocalypse Keys replaces stats with tokens that you spend. (Even in Vincent and Meguey Baker’s latest PbtA game, Under Hollow Hills, you assign your points directly to the moves. You don’t have +2 in Strength, you have +2 in “Weather the Storm”.)
It’s not that stats don’t have a place in storygame design. It’s just that I think we’re seeing a lot more ways of mechanically representing and diffrentating characters now. And these new ways do double-duty - they also give new narrative permissions but I’ll save that for next week.
Statistically yours,
Thomas
II. Listen of the Week
The Weekly Scroll is a podcast that does long, lightly edited reviews of indie RPGs. This week, they’ve done 3 hour episodes of Gun & Slinger (a 2 player, 1 GM card-based Weird West game) and Death in Space (space horror game distributed by Free League).
I’ve been checking out some back episodes of the Morrus Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk and enjoyed this episode with TrooperSJP, a really well-informed voice in the space talking about the statistics of how streaming RPGs on twitch. For the first hour, it’s all RPG news and then the guest talks about their subject so skip the first sixty minutes or so if you only want to hear that section.
III. Links of the Week
Jason of Pretendo Games talks about why he keeps going back to Into the Odd as the foundation for his game design.
On the Gauntlet blog, Lowell Francis puts up his notes for a 12 session Fall of Delta Green campaign.
The ‘to do it, do it’ newsletter looks at a couple games - Against the Dark Conspiracy and Hearts of Wulin - and how they go from dynamic setup to escalating stakes: “I feel like both of these games are doing something interesting and cool with a basic idea common to a lot of post-pbta story games: that the combination of your set-up and your dice mechanics should produce a lot of dynamic fiction and drama, without any of it being predetermined or planned.”
The Waltorius Writes blog continues their look at games from their itch.io BLM Bundle with Catch the Devil (from Sage La Torra, co-designer of Dungeon World) and Final Lap (a Descended From The Queen game about racing).
The Split/Party newsletter is reviewing Monster Care Squad and they touch on everything from the art to the political history that underpins the setting.
IV. Small Ads
All links in the newsletter are completely based on my own interest. But to help support my work, this section contains sponsored links and advertisements. If you’d like your products to appear here, read the submission form.
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Using elements of play, the cards, dice & tokens as the stats?
Per usual, I sit down to read your newsletter and go plummeting down another rabbit hole of design. Thanks Thomas!
Masks has an interesting approach here, with stats that are fairly traditional in some ways (ranging from -2 to +3, answering questions like "how good are you at fighting?") but very unique in others. They are called Labels, their names are things like "Danger" and "Superior" and 'Mundane," and (most crucially!) they shift around as grown-ups tell you who you are and how the world works. Building off that traditional base, Masks makes its stats mean something really specific about its themes of young people figuring out who they are based (partly) on how the world sees them.