Shamus Young on SPECIAL

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Shamus Young, the famous blogger, webcomicker, software designer and 19th-century trapper, has been looking at character progression in games, and in his latest article declares his undying love for SPECIAL.<blockquote>There are seven core attributes in the game: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck, which spell SPECIAL. That’s clever and makes them easy to remember. Seven is a lot of attributes, but they are clearly delineated and easy to understand. There aren’t any ambiguous stats, or stats which overlap. Nebulous, personality-driven concepts like wisdom are left off the list entirely. I’ve always disliked games where things which should be emergent during roleplaying end up assigned a hard numerical value. How “wise” or “foolish” I am should be determined by the choices I make in the game, not my character sheet.</blockquote>A lot of what he writes will be very familiar to any Fallout fan, of course, and not all of it is strictly correct (like saying you can't dump Charisma in Fo1, cough). He has some valid criticism of the skill selection that echoes J.E. Sawyer, and ends with a forward look:<blockquote>It’s an interesting, varied, robust, well-balanced system. I doubt we’ll ever see its like again. Bethesda is coming out with a new Fallout title. They’re keeping the SPECIAL system, but moving the combat to real-time. Since a great deal of the original system was built around turn-based combat using “action points”, a lot of the usefulness of the original attributes and perks will be lost. But hey, who needs depth and gameplay when you have OMG LOOKIT THE PRETTY PIXULS SWEET GRAFIX!!!!!!111!!</blockquote>Is Shamus Young secretly an NMA poster?

Link: Fallout: Character System

Thanks to Bengan.
 
I like this guy alot. I can safely say that his opinions match up perfectly with my outlook on Fallout 1,2, and 3. Ill still buy the game but... ahh well. I'm going to still bitch about how much Bethesda sucks mule phalis and complain about everything wrong with Fallout 3, A post-nuclear venture of Todds D&D fantasies.
 
Dopemine Cleric said:
I like this guy alot. I can safely say that his opinions match up perfectly with my outlook on Fallout 1,2, and 3. Ill still buy the game but... ahh well. I'm going to still bitch about how much Bethesda sucks mule phalis and complain about everything wrong with Fallout 3, A post-nuclear venture of Todds D&D fantasies.
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Heh, me too.

At least this guy knows what he is talking about, unlike noobs from IGN or VooDoo 3D
 
Stephen Amber said:
Wisdom is nebulous but charisma's not? Ok...
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They're not by the definition he's running with. Things that should be determined by gameplay, as in how good, how wise or how decisive a player is, are separate from Fallout's SPECIAL, all of which are attributes you are born with and which you can't "decide" to change.

Now it's true that to some level things like strength, charisma and intelligence are adaptable through training, but we're talking long time-frame there, not something a general RPG allows for. It makes a lot of sense to have no fast progression in these attributes, which is something other attributes do.

Would "wisdom" absolutely not fit in that framework? I think it could, if you described it well enough, but it probably couldn't in the way AD&D uses it
 
I think SPECIAL is vastly underrated in some circles.

It was a hastily cooked up and thus ill-balanced and kind of rough-shod character system, true. There were a lot of ill-thought elements in there, and it did not contain the expansiveness of GURPS.

And yet...yet...people easily forgot that this is still the time of lazy licensing and copying. Primarily, the goals of character systems in the 90's were either simply to copy (AD&D or GURPS) often through licensing, or to be simple and functional.

There are not a lot of character systems out there that are ready-made for usage in cRPGs, rather than just adaptations of pen & paper mechanics to another medium, and still as in-depth and logical as SPECIAL.

't is a special system, really
 
Nevermore said:
Stephen Amber said:
There aren’t any ambiguous stats
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Wisdom is nebulous but charisma's not? Ok...
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Charisma isn't nebulous since it's mainly derived from good (or bad) looks and presence.
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Good looks and charm, both of which are subjective. Sorta how Julia Roberts could marry that potato Lyle Lovett when everyone else thought he was butt ugly. Or how Obama polls better with blacks simply because he's black. A racial factor there. No, charisma is at least as ambiguous as wisdom in my view.
 
Stephen Amber said:
Good looks and charm, both of which are subjective. Sorta how Julia Roberts could marry that potato Lyle Lovett when everyone else thought he was butt ugly. Or how Obama polls better with blacks simply because he's black. A racial factor there. No, charisma is at least as ambiguous as wisdom in my view.
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Sure, but as said above, how "subjective" and "ambiguous" it is isn't what the author was discussing when he calls it "nebulous", so you're holding it up to different standards than he is. Which is just pointless.
 
dagorkan said:
I like Fallout but SPECIAL ain't nothing special.
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Yeah, I like Dungeons and Dragons but the rules are nothing special...

What's left? Lore.

For the record, I DON'T like D&D.
 
Brother None said:
Stephen Amber said:
Good looks and charm, both of which are subjective. Sorta how Julia Roberts could marry that potato Lyle Lovett when everyone else thought he was butt ugly. Or how Obama polls better with blacks simply because he's black. A racial factor there. No, charisma is at least as ambiguous as wisdom in my view.
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Sure, but as said above, how "subjective" and "ambiguous" it is isn't what the author was discussing when he calls it "nebulous", so you're holding it up to different standards than he is. Which is just pointless.
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Huh? The guy used the word ambiguous right in his blog...
 
Stephen Amber said:
Huh? The guy used the word ambiguous right in his blog...
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Not when comparing them to wisdom. It's the personality-driven part that bothered him about wisdom vs. say, charisma, not the ambiguity.

Besides, I'm fairly sure he means ambiguous as a gameplay mechanic, thus in another context as you're using it in, since he's also discussing overlap there. The SPECIAL stats are clearly defined and what they determine is also very clear, i.e. not ambiguous.

But this is toeing too much towards a semantics discussion of what someone else said. And that's just plain old silly.
 
I always thought that translating special into a real-time game would be easy for just about anyone with a few hours of free time to accomplish?

Sure, it'd be far from a carbon copy, but it could easily have the same implications, just with different numbers. Most turn based numerical systems make for easy translation into real time if the will and creativity is there, even for people who are not professionals at this kind of thing. It's been done many times in the past, not always effectively, but many times it worked just fine.
 
xdarkyrex said:
I always thought that translating special into a real-time game would be easy for just about anyone with a few hours of free time to accomplish?
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In the same way that a real-time system can be translated to turn-based in a few hours. i.e. not

Because the fundamentals of quite a lot of SPECIAL, significantly in perks but more noticeably in the balance between agility, gun-skills and other stats, are heaved on turn-based, that takes quite a lot of translating. Sure, the non-combat skills don't, but none of the combat-related skills or characteristics can be left intact.
 
I'm definitely a big fan of SPECIAL. The fact that you don't get to level up your SPECIAL stats every 1-5 levels like in other systems is pretty unique, and really added to the replay value in fallout 1/2 for me.

Comparing it to oblivion (which is inevitable) SPECIAL wins out completely. One of the largest (but not only) complaints about oblivion is the fact that attributes are stupid because any character can end up maxing them all, just like any character can do all of the guild quests etc.

I really hope Bethesda at least keeps that part of SPECIAL the same, if I have to worry about governing attributes in Fallout 3 I probably won't even play it.
 
quetzilla said:
I really hope Bethesda at least keeps that part of SPECIAL the same, if I have to worry about governing attributes in Fallout 3 I probably won't even play it.
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Not completely. You will be able to collect 8 bobblehead dolls, each giving you a stat point.

I'm NOT joking.
 
Morbus said:
quetzilla said:
I really hope Bethesda at least keeps that part of SPECIAL the same, if I have to worry about governing attributes in Fallout 3 I probably won't even play it.
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Not completely. You will be able to collect 8 bobblehead dolls, each giving you a stat point.

I'm NOT joking.
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Eh, that's not so bad. Bobbleheads can be ignored.

Wait a second, 8? SPECIAL is seven letters...
 
quetzilla said:
Eh, that's not so bad. Bobbleheads can be ignored.
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Heh, sure they can, except when the game is designed around them. And other similar things. You can't ignore something when the game design is made according to that. Just like Oblivion's quest compass, you know?

quetzilla said:
Wait a second, 8? SPECIAL is seven letters...
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Who said it's one for each stat?
 
Brother None said:
xdarkyrex said:
I always thought that translating special into a real-time game would be easy for just about anyone with a few hours of free time to accomplish?
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In the same way that a real-time system can be translated to turn-based in a few hours. i.e. not

Because the fundamentals of quite a lot of SPECIAL, significantly in perks but more noticeably in the balance between agility, gun-skills and other stats, are heaved on turn-based, that takes quite a lot of translating. Sure, the non-combat skills don't, but none of the combat-related skills or characteristics can be left intact.
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Eh, I think it'd be just fine. I've translated real-time games into turn based systems before and it worked just fine. It's never been very challenging, and special isn't exactly the most complex system. It would definitely change the nature of the game, considering its NOT turn based, but even the most basic translation to rt in fot worked just fine. I actually enjoyed playing the game in rt. (especially for easy battles). Not to say that fot was a perfect translation or anything, they definitely did not balance the stats appropriately in someregards, but the SPECIAL system is not even remotely too complex to translate easily. It's not like we are talking about D&D 3.5 here or anything.
 
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