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White Wolf Devlog 3: Attributes

White Wolf’s Attributes were surprisingly revolutionary, as D&D had set such a strong precedent with ‘S,D,C,I,W,Cha’. The deviation’s great, but they retained some bizarre ideas from D&D.

Dexterity

‘Dexterity’ should really refer to coordination, but it was soon used as a ‘speed’ stat, showing how fast someone can run. It seems to pull in bodily-awareness (to dodge attacks), sprinting, the coordination one needs for a gun, for bows, and for swords.

It’s a large, misshapen bag.

It’s hard to know what to do with this problem without massive system rewrites.

Stamina

‘Stamina’ looks a lot like Strength. It’s hard to picture someone with a lot of ‘stamina’, but low strength, or the reverse.

The other Attributes don’t work like this. A manipulative but ugly person, or a very witty person with little-to-no intelligence doesn’t confuse anyone. But someone who can take a serious punch in the face, yet can’t lift anything big? The image just doesn’t make sense.

If we limit Stamina to some sub-set, things get easier. It’s easy to imagine a middle-aged woman who can out-walk a body builder (assuming a walk over twenty kilometres), or endure viruses better, and withstand more pain. But the moment we use Stamina to indicate physical blows, and taking a beating, the tough woman image stops making sense, and we’re back to picturing physical bulk.

Things get worse when we consider vampires. People tire after running for a while, but the undead body (or so the books say) does not tire, so vampires can cover incredible distances in a night. They also don’t suffer from diseases. It looks like we’ve lost half the reason for Stamina to exist, so the system currently screams for retaining it.

Appearance

Appearance is weird. Appearance is a social attribute which refers only to physical features. Appearance creates all manner of system problems, as someone changing their appearance through plastic-surgery or occult abilities. Appearance suggests that a 500 year old vampire would coordinate some of their social life based on the shape of their face and other people’s faces.

I like Appearance. It’s weird.