Iron Tower Studio - Designing Character Systems with Josh Sawyer

Iron Tower's Vince D. Weller has a fascinating discussion with Josh Saywer on desgning character systems.  Here's the first question, which has an Aliens reference:

Let's start with attributes. What are your preferences? DnD-like 3 physical, 3 "mental" stats or something more complex? Should you be able to increase them through levels, trainers, or gadgets or not? Why? How should stats affect gameplay? Which character systems influenced you?

These days, I tend to err on the side of simpler, more abstracted systems.  I try to think from the perspective of player action as the foundation for the system.  That is, I think "What should the player be able to do in this environment?" and "What will the player want to be able to do in this environment?" and then try to build a system to support it.

For example, in the Aliens setting, there is a heavy emphasis on a character's ability to deal with stress. So I've thought about that in terms of the differences between learned skill and something innate to a character in the setting. It's arguable that the ability to resist the sort of mental trauma in the Aliens setting is a learned skill (the equivalent of Combat Cool in Cyberpunk 20/20's "Friday Night Fire Fight") and some of it is more inherent to the character, a fundamental part of who they are that isn't likely to change much over the course of the character's time in the game.  So I think "Should this be represented in the game?", "How should this be represented in the game?" and "By what mechanics can the player mess with this representation?".  You can see a similar sort of approach in games like Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu and even in the 2nd Edition AD&D Ravenloft supplemental rules.  But in other settings, those sorts of mechanics and stats aren't really necessary.  The specifics depend entirely on the game, though I approach those specifics from the practical perspective of supporting low-level core gameplay instead of satisfying a high-level set of mechanical ideals.