Video Game Attributes, Ranked & Revised pt. 4
These essays are part of a series that started as a response to this listicle by Tom Ley.
#11 Magic
I’d argue that every attribute till this point has more utility that the absurdly broad trait of “magic.” Magic could very well contain most of the other attributes, from Luck to Charm to Constitution. When an ability reaches an exceptional level, it appears as magic. When the inherent specialness of any quality is isolated and brought into focus, it appears as magic.
In the RPG tradition magic refers, of course, to sorceries. The ability to engineer occult or extra-spectral phenomena through arcane means, and to make these phenomena effective in relation to ordinary consciousness. Games wisely tend to distribute specific parts of this territory into other traits: wisdom, intelligence, magic attack, magic defense, psy, whatever. The vast variety of different functions and productions of magic would originate from these different magical territories. If “magic” in independence as an attribute were to unlock anything within the native, I suppose it would be the capability to acquire and access the full menagerie of magical arts. High “magic” could be implemented as indiscriminate access to an array of skills/spells/ techniques. But performing these arts may not be effective without cultivating their other requisite qualities!
The primary quality which separates Charisma from the nearly identical Charm is its inclination toward channeling. It implies an absorption of a collective undercurrent. Whereas charm may radiate from a character’s individuality, charisma is more like a conductor of the group’s energy. Like charm, its role as an RPG mechanic would like have something to do with passive buffs, or opening the window that allows group synthesis to come through. It doesn’t lend itself as handily to 1-on-1 encounters. See Charm for more information.
#9 Quickness
Another attribute best understood by comparison with its neighbors. In this case: alertness, dexterity, and agility. In old English, “quick” was synonymous with “alert.” In modern RPGs, it is usually synonymous with dexterity and agility. Alertness is set apart by its mental component – a readiness that comes with skillful perception. Quickness has borrowed a bit of this cognitive component, and coupled it with the physicality of dexterity and agility. Another function which is partly performed by the player, making the in-game metric potentially redundant.
Stamina as a stat is the capacity to sustain effort. In the context of the game’s narrative, it’s the physical limitations of the character’s supposed body. Viewed from the outside, we understand that there are no such limitations. For the player, the limitation is the cap on the avatar’s ability to respond to our input. They are experiencing “exhaustion,” though they are not necessarily depleted of anything! The inability to respond is a blockage. A character with high stamina can sustain the direction of the force which compels (the player).
The intellect is what allows for exercises of reason and logic. This is the nest of therefores. The “spells” of the intellect are strictly apollonian: like the scientific method, they are repeatable and thereby undeniably valid. This is where we derive the ability to navigate and direct networks of inference. What is produced in this method resembles magic, and the distinction between these modalities has become so embellished in our current social climate that it’s hard to contrast these terms accurately.
It is natural for a high-INT character in a game to have access to many spells and for them to perform those spells effectively. An ideal approach to intellect as a stat would preclude entire strata of spells from being accessed by it. Many genres of spells are native to other functions of the mind, and it seems silly to have intellect as a skeleton key for all spellcasting practices. Spells which are cast by a deliberate ordering of gestures/words/objects are within the expertise of the intellect. All other spells are not.
At this point in the list we’ve seen a number of redundant or semi-redundant attributes. Why are these the canonical ones? How did Tom Ley arrive at this selection? I started this exercise because I thought it was so absurd to rank a bunch of random RPG attributes with no explanation, and because I had immediate value judgments about that list at first glance. It also amplified a feeling I’ve gotten from RPG culture at large: that this reduction of the performance of the human being into quantifiable values within a fixed system leaks into a person’s self-conceptualization.
It’s incredibly seductive to gamify irl experiences. To improve at a task and say that we’ve leveled up. To imagine one’s mind partitioned into discrete functions that develop independently. The intellect loves this concept, since it is formally coherent. But to deny that which is incoherent about a person (irrational attributes like luck, empathy and piety) gives us paper dolls of characters. This is fine in a game, because we can use our irrationality to relate to these dolls – this is how we become immersed! On the other hand, if we allow that psychic thinness to contaminate our conceptions of irl people then we’re in a bit of trouble!
In any case, what I found myself coming back to in many of these attributes is their interdependence. It’s not an equivalent independence, of course, as we’re looking at a motley non-elemental assortment of human attributes. But it’s clear that no part of the mind is truly discrete, at least not when it is examined or employed. It would be cool to see more games take a holistic approach to RPG attributes, because there are countless ways of mapping human capacity that are more dynamic and realistic. In refining the reflection of ourselves in the game world, one would be designing games that are more conducive to leveling up the person playing.
