When you’re creating playbooks, how do you decide what kind of stat distribution to give? This is the single most-difficult part of my Demihumans project, so far. The moves seem like they’re going to be creatively-exhausting to write, but at least I have some tropes to start with. This just feels like a giant math problem.
I tried to analyze the stat bonuses in AW (see attached spreadsheet) but it’s hard to draw a pattern.
What do you do?
Most PbtA games either have only a single starting array and one or two points to put anywhere, or a playbook independent set of starting values for players to distribute.
Yeah, but how does one make the decisions of what to put where?
This is relevant to my interests. I am also certain the master, Vincent Baker, has addressed this topic before.
Side note – if four stats, does -1, 0, +1 +1, and add one of your choice sound ok?
Vincent Baker has done so, here: apocalypse-world.com – how the stats balance
That might work as a base to elaborate from, Toby. Thank you. But for many games, giving everyone the same stat array seems weird to me.
Thanks, Herman! Sounds like just what I need.
I used the same array of +2, +1, 0, -1 across all playbooks, but didn’t give them a free choice – instead I gave each playbook a list of 3 or so options, generally keeping the +2 constant across all arrays or swapping it between two stats. To decide on those arrays, I basically just thought about what I wanted the range of that playbook to be. So all Elders have Sway at +2 – that’s crucial. Most of them have pretty good Lore, and some have alright Steel, but none are great at using Force.
So what I’d say is decide how broad you want each playbook to be in how they can be described using your stats. Based on that, you can go completely free with an array but no limits on where to assign them (the Dungeon World way), present a few arrays pre-assigned to the stats (the Apocalypse World way), or present a single array with the player able to add 1 to one (the Monsterhearts way).
I definitely want the playbook to control your stats to a large degree.
Fer me it’s somewhere between bonefeel and arbitrary. I mentally come up with a few possible characters that could be represented by a playbook, like a baseline of their fiction, and then I stat them, and then those become my stat arrays.
You can add or remove choices on a playbook-by-playbook basis, too – ask ‘is there something I can say about this stat for all characters working from this playbook?’ If so, let that guide how open you make the choice.