From: Yep, 'tis me! (acb@duke.cs.duke.edu)
Date: Sat 18 Aug 1990 - 09:56:33 EEST
I dislike completely random attributes. In RPGs, a person becomes a fighter
because he/she is strong. In "real life", a person becomes strong because
he/she is athletic. There is genetic variation between people, but their
environment is a large factor too.
I would like to represent this in FRPs. Note that this is intended to replace any specific strength training, con training, or dex training rules, although what I write now is incomplete.
Using my ideas, the Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution stats should be considered as measures of the person's genetic potential, not of the actual statistic. From this number and the hours of appropriate exercise the person does per year, we can generate their current strength.
Thus the farmboy fresh off the farm has a high strength from all his chores. The sorceror who spends all of his time studying his books will have his muscles atrophying. [Likewise, those of us who spend all day in front of a computer...]
What is necessary to implement this system is to determine the exercise value
of various forms of exercise and training, and determine how much exercise
(based on one's current strength and genetic strength) is needed to maintain
one's strength, and to increase it.
To make this simpler we can say that it takes a certain number of hours of "maintenance exercise" missed for attributes to start dropping, regardless of how much time that missed exercise is spread over. Likewise, additional hours of appropriate exercise to increase attributes can also be spread over as much time as necessary. We can make it even simpler by making the amount of maintenance or enhancement based on the difference between our genetic strength and our current strength. Thus a person with a 12 genetic strength needs the same time to maintain a 10 strength as a person with 18 Gen Str. and a 16 strength.
(Thus if we need 10 hours of exercise a week to maintain strength, missing
one week will have us atrophy as much as if we only did 9 hours of exercise for
10 weeks.)
Any form of activity can be given a rating in terms of aid to strength, constitution, and dexterity. (This is the part that is most of the work, although we can group skills to make it easier.)
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