[freeroleplay] Re: Perception vs. Pragmatics

[Pitt Murmann]

On Wed, 2006-05-24 at 16:49:38 [+0100], Ricardo Gladwell wrote:

> I moved the article to wiki on my home server and updated as per your
> suggestions:
> 
> http://gladwell.selfip.com/notes/doku.php?id=attribute_components

I like the introduction of Finesse as a sub attribute of Agility. The
old (Google) page somewhat lacked the aspect of manual Dexterity.

Grace (of Agility) seems to comprise personal expression, which might
make it a candidate for a span-attribute between Agility and Charisma.

It always occured to me that Wisdom and Insight represented the result
of gradually gained experience. If I have lead a rich live, have met
many interesting people and have fought many beasts, I might, some day,
call myself Wise, and, with the aspect of philosophiae coming into play,
even Insightful. Legend of the Five Rings features a nice way of taking
care of exactly that, with Insight summing up all abilities (including
attributes) a character sports.

Observation, as I see it, is quite active a trait, describing the action
of observing a scene, an event, a something. Perception, on the other
hand, is not necessarily an active trait (nor is it really passive), but
with monitoring taking place (the action of perceiving), things usually
come to you without an initial trigger of yourself. This is why I would
probably call it Awareness instead, emphasizing the passivity of
Receiving and Perceiving.

You list several attributes that are likely to change over time. There
is nothing wrong with that, however, as I understand it, attributes
usually stand for fundamental statistics that, once a mortal has reached
majority, won't change very much, at least not to a great extend. Then
again, certain attributes, like Fitness and Conviction, seem to
represent your general Physical Condition and your current Truth in
(whatever) Faith. Such traits could easily change. As an example, two
clones, both being created with exactly the same attributes, might
quickly develop different numerics regarding Fitness, depending on
whether they become athletes or book worms, and even the one who is
doing lots of sports in his spare time is likely to be more fit than the
one who collects stamps or does pen & paper role playing only. This idea
of looking at things implies a rather simulationistic approach, which I
assumed was what a generic rules set was heading for.

I found several duplicates being around, which, on the first glance,
gave me the impression of recursive definitions. Maybe one way out of
this might be a generalization towards terms like

o  Physical abilities
o  Mental abilities
o  Social abilities

as they are frequently used by other games. To allow for smooth
transitions, attributes might be part of several categories at once.
Liking extraordinary styles of representation, I'd probably take them
down in a circular chart, a Moebius ribbon of essence, so to speak.

The definitions of terms might depend on cultural heritage or personal
interpretation, which is probably why there is an infinity amount of how
to describe and evaluate such terms.

> If people would like to collaborate please feel free to edit the article
> or keep your thoughts, omissions and suggestions coming.

I didn't dare to touch it, but rather went the traditional way of
pouring my thoughts into e-mail.

Regards,

  - PM