[Rq-rules] *** JUNK MAIL ***Re: Farewell to CON and thoughts on APP

[Simon Phipp]

Too many points to reply to individually.

Being healthy does not make you atrtractive. I know of ugly people who are never sick and attractive people who are always sick. 

Being fat does not make you unhealthy - I know of fat people who are never ill and slim people who are often ill.

None of the Characteristics relate exactly to the real world. But, they are a reasonable, easy to understand, usable model.

STR - Relates to how much you can lift, but doesn't take body mass nto account
CON - Relates to how healthy you are, but is so vague as to be unmeasurable
SIZ - Relates to how big you are, but doesn't take into account short fat people and tall thin people or different body shapes, such as horses
INT - Realtes to intelligence, which is difficult to quantify at the best of times, some say INT = IQ/10, but as IQ is pretty much a rubbish idea, this doesn't mean much
POW - How Magically Powerful or Lucky you are, but luck is not quanitifiable in any realistic way
DEX - How dextrous you are, pretty meaningless as it covers manual dexterity, physical speed of reflexes and movement, all of which can be different - clumsy people with fast reflexes etc.
CHA - How charismatic someone is - once again, this is entirely subjective and not quantifiable
APP - How attractive someone is - once again, this is entirely subjective and not quantifiable
EDU - How educated someone is, how is it measured? By qualifications? I know people who are well qualified but uneducated and very knowledgable and well-read people with no qualifications.
SAN - How sane you are (no need to comment on this one as it is patently rubbish)

So, picking on a single characteristic and saying it is meaningless is unfair, as they are all meaningless.

But, rolplaying games need some way to determine the general characteristics of a charcacter's physical form. The above characteristics are general and vague, but you know pretty well what they mean and how they can be used in the game. They are a compromise between realism and playable. 

I think they are a good compromise.

I have seen variants on them (LEN and MAS rather than SIZ (Other Suns), LUC for Luck, PSI for Psi Powers, CHI for Ki powers) and they all have their merits and are probably as reasonable as the others. If you try and slim them down then you are left with the problem that a high BDY (for Body) means healthy, big and strong, which doesn't work for small healthy people or big, weak people and so on. If you have too many characteristics they become unworkable, too few and they have too  any functions.

See Ya

Simon
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