作者：Dan Fabulich

就像我们在之前的文章里提到过的，如果你想写出一篇不错的长篇交互小说，你将需要使用大量的数值，或者说是人物角色的相关状态数据。

的确，如果你强势地把所有分支点整合成一个整体，那么整个游戏都可以称得上是一个状态数值库，你所做的每一个决定都将对这个状态值产生影响，并且能对早前的状态值做出相关评测，使它们变得更加合理有意义。

本文将集中讨论一些能使我们编写出理想游戏状态值的技巧。

技巧1：不要仅考虑技能

游戏开发新手们经常会把状态值当成是一张技能列表，即帮助玩家能在游戏中过关斩将的指南。

例如在《Choice of Broadsides》中，玩家拥有“航海”，“射击”和“领导”等技能，而在《Choice of the Vampire》中，玩家则可以通过“秘密行动”，“亡命街头”或者“经验知识”等技能赢得胜利。

但是如果你的所有角色状态值都只是关于技能，那么你的游戏将会出现以下问题：

出现了一个挑战！你要怎样战胜它？

A）使用技能X

B）使用技能Y

C）使用技能Z

显然，我们有可能让这些选择变得更加有趣。我们可以暗示玩家他们面临的每一个挑战都有一个最适当的解决方法，但是都需要有一个足够厉害的技能。如果我们设定一些挑战需要X技能，一些需要Y技能以及一些需要Z技能，那么玩家将被迫做出选择，决定自己将使用最有利的技能，或者是最适合应对挑战的技能。

但是不管怎么说，这些技能除了能让玩家在游戏中走得更远之外，反而会因为反复的风险评估，而使得他们越快感到厌烦。

一款好的游戏应该让玩家能够在面临选择时按照自己的想法做出决定。

所以除了技能之外我们还能赋予状态值什么特质呢？

技巧2：涵盖个性特征

向玩家提出一些关于个性测试的问题。这些问题并没有客观的正确答案，玩家可以自由作答，甚至扮演其他角色而做出有悖于自己真实情况的回答。（游戏邦注：但是要确保，这些个性特征都必须是有意义的，并且将在后来的游戏中对玩家产生影响！）

以下是你必须要考虑到的一些个性特征：

冷静

温顺

富有同情心

灵性

诚实

快乐

自信

自私

愤世嫉俗

固执

在《Choice of the Dragon》，我们让游戏角色既带有个性特征，也拥有一定的游戏技能。例如，你的龙“残暴”意味着它是残忍的（这是它的个性特征）并且能在直接战斗中拥有绝对优势。同样的，如果你的龙是狡猾的，那就意味着它不够正直，但却很聪明。

技巧3：包含道德特征

要让玩家面临一些道德窘境——这与常规的道德标准相矛盾，但是却需要玩家按照正常的道德标准作出回应。

（游戏邦注：也许道德特征可以算是个性特征中的一个特殊面，但是因为它将影响玩家做出一些有趣的选择，所以本文把它单独列出来说明。）

游戏《创世纪》便提供了一系列道德特征（即我们通常所说的“美德”）供玩家做出选择：

诚实

富有同情心

英勇

公正

奉献

讲信用

精神性

谦卑

《创世纪IV》在游戏的一开始便向玩家提出了七个关于道德的问题，使玩家在这些美德中间做出选择：

你发誓忠于你的主人，但是他却违背常理地对囚徒们施以酷刑。每一个晚上你都会听到那些囚徒们凄惨的哭喊声。这时你会怎么做？

A）出于同情心而向世人说出主人的残忍行为，或者

B）忠于你的主人，无视他的行为。

技巧4：让状态值具有世界性

多数游戏状态值界面的内容与《龙与地下城》的人物资讯表中的数据相同，这些数据与你的游戏角色密切相关。其实你也可以涵括一些与你的游戏角色有关，且不只是个性特征的属性。

例如，你可以设定一些与非玩家人物角色相关的状态值，包括他们的一些技能和性格，以及与玩家扮演的游戏角色间的关系等。

你同时也可以涵括一些与社会及文化相关的状态值，例如游戏中的城镇会变得越来越好还是越来越衰败？玩家在游戏中的声望如何？有多少人臣服于他？而有多少人真心效忠于他？

你还可以估量一个大事件的发展进程：需要花费多少时间？我们离最后的胜利还有多远？我们将遗弃多少资源等等。

具有世界性的状态值很重要，不少人认为角色状态值毕竟只是游戏在模拟世界或者“世界模型”中一个很小的组成部分而已。

技巧5：为玩家提供可消耗的资源

提供给玩家5瓶魔法药水，200块金子或者其它任何一种资源，并让玩家自行决定如何使用它们。

玩家可以在角色死去之前通过受伤次数为代价换取资源。在《龙与地下城》中，玩家会因为一些选择而使得自己的龙遭受到不可磨灭的伤痛，而如果他们的龙遭受到过多的伤痛，便会因此而死去。

技巧6：创造合理的替代品

如果你想要让你的游戏富有一些有趣的决策，那么你需要提供给玩家一些同样有吸引力的替代品。但如果这些选择看起来明显优于或者劣于其它选项，那么玩家可能就不会乐意从中做出选择。

因为你的游戏绝大多数选择都与状态值有关，所以你最好保证这些状态值在游戏中的重要性都是平等有效的，并不存在哪一个状态值优于或劣于他者。

ChoiceScript可提供一个同样吸引人的合理替代品：你可以制作出两个完全“对立”的状态值。在游戏《Choice of the Dragon》中，我们提供了两个完全相悖的状态值，即狡猾与信用，而在《Choice of the Vampire》中，也出现了迷信与理性这两个矛盾体。如果你使用了这一技巧，你同样也需要合理判断什么时候迷信比较有利，什么时候理性更为有益。

但你需要注意的是，比起相斥的技能，对立的个性特征（如愤世嫉俗与纯真）无异于一种更为自然的设置（例如，为什么我的能量降低了，我却反倒变聪明了？）这就是为何你的状态值清单里不能只包含技能的另一个原因。

注意：我们常常会很容易写出一个没有意义的状态值，我们在编写游戏时经常会犯这种错误。我们会在一开始编写出一系列状态值，但是后来慢慢发现，我们并未真正使用这些规划好的状态值。举个例子来说吧，当我们开始编写《Choice of the Dragon》，我们计划好了一个忠诚的角色状态值，衡量你的小妖精或仆人是否将忠实地听从你的命令，但是最终却发现，这些状态值却并未派上用场。很多没有意义的状态值会让你的玩家觉得厌烦，所以你需要在发现它们之后立马纠正过来，避免不必要的麻烦。

技巧7：富有创意

我们总是在尝试避开传统角色扮演游戏中的状态值（如能量，机敏，聪明，有魅力等因素），一部分是因为这些状态值纯粹与技能有关，而另一个原因便是这些状态值都已经屡见不鲜。

你应该想想自己能否为游戏设想出更多不走寻常路的状态值，或者至少是一些新鲜的名称。

以下是一些你也许不会想到的状态值：

谄媚

诱惑

礼貌

血压

羞耻

温和

流行

好记性

光彩

本体感受

整齐

节俭

猥亵

亵渎神明

反思

想象力

暴饮暴食

体重

转矩

后勤

命运

如此看来，还有很多不寻常的技能你可以采纳，并融入你的游戏中去！（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

7 Rules for Designing Great Stats

Dan Fabulich

As we discussed in an earlier article, if you want to write a long interactive novel that doesn’t suck, you’ll need to make to make heavy use of numeric scores or “stats.”

Indeed, if you merge branches aggressively as we recommend, the entire game will be about the stats; every decision will update the stats and test earlier stats to make earlier decisions meaningful.

In this article, we discuss a few techniques for designing great stats.

Rule 1: Don’t Just Use Skills

New authors frequently make their stats nothing more than a list of skills that the player (the hero) will need over the course of her adventures.

For example, in Choice of Broadsides, we have skills like Sailing, Gunnery, and Leadership. In Choice of the Vampire, you can use Stealth, Streetwise, and Lore, among others.

But when your stats are all about skills, then every question in your game starts to look like this:

A challenge! How will you overcome it?

A) Use Skill X

B) Use Skill Y

C) Use Skill Z

It is definitely possible to make these choices interesting. Typically we do it by dropping hints that each challenge has a “best way” to beat it, but only if a particular skill is high enough. If we have some challenges that require X, some challenges that require Y, and some that require Z, players will be forced to choose whether to use their best skill or the skill most suited to the challenge.

But this technique can only take you so far. Making the same risk assessment over and over gets boring fast!

A good game should force the player to decide what she wants to do at least as often as she decides which option would work best.

What do we suggest in addition to a few skills?

Rule 2: Include Personality Traits
Ask the player the sorts of questions that might appear in a personality quiz. These questions rarely have a right answer, and they give players the freedom to role play another person by giving answers totally unlike themselves. (Be sure to make these personality traits meaningful by having them affect the story later on!)

Here’s a few personality traits you might consider:

Calmness

Gentleness

Compassion

Spirituality

Honesty

Happiness

Confidence

Selfishness

Cynicism

Stubbornness

In Choice of the Dragon, we chose to make some stats act as both personality traits and skills. For example, your dragon’s Brutality represents both your dragon’s cruelty (a personality trait) and your dragon’s strength in direct combat. Similarly, your Cunning represents both dishonesty and intelligence.

Rule 3: Include Morality Traits
Force the player to face some moral dilemmas, where the common rules of morality seem to contradict, and keep track of the player’s answers with morality scores.

(Perhaps morality is just a special type of personality trait, but it deserves a separate section because it’s a great way to develop interesting choices.)

The Ultima games had a rich set of morality traits (called “virtues”), allowing players to choose between:

Honesty

Compassion

Valor

Justice

Sacrifice

Honor

Spirituality

Humility

Ultima IV begins by asking the player to answer seven moral dilemmas, pitting these virtues against each other:

Thou art sworn to uphold a Lord who participates in the forbidden torture of prisoners. Each night their cries of pain reach thee. Dost thou:

A) Show Compassion by reporting the deeds, or

B) Honor thy oath and ignore the deeds?

Rule 4: Include Stats about the World

Most of the stats you see on the stats screen are the sort of numbers you’d see on a character sheet in a game of Dungeons & Dragons; they’re all about your character. But it’s good to include some stats that your character can influence and that aren’t just personal attributes.

For example, you might have stats about other non-player characters, including some of their skills and personality traits, as well as their relationships to the main player character and to each other.

You can also include stats about society and culture; is the town becoming more good or evil? What’s my reputation? How much do people fear me? How much do they love me?

You can measure the progress towards a big event: how much time is passing, how close we are to winning the war, how many resources are left, etc.

Stats about the world are so important that some people think character stats are really just a small part of the game’s “world simulation” or “world model.” After all, the character is one small part of the game’s world.

Rule 5: Give the Player Expendable Resources

Give the player five magic potions, or 200 gold, or any other kind of resource, asking the player to decide how best to use it.

A common resource is how many wounds the player character can take before dying; in Dragon, certain choices cause your dragon to take a permanent wound. If your dragon suffers more than a certain number of wounds, your dragon dies.

Rule 6: Create Good Alternatives

If you want the decisions in your game to be interesting, you’ll have to present the player with several equally appealing alternatives. If one of those choices looks considerably better or worse than the others, then players won’t have as much fun making the decision. (This idea is discussed at greater length in another article.)

Since most of the choices in your game will be about the stats, it’s especially important not to make one stat much better or worse than the others. Make sure each of your stats is equally useful over the course of the story.

ChoiceScript provides a nice way to make alternatives equally appealing: you can make two stats “oppose” one another. You can see this in Choice of the Dragon, where we make Cunning and Honor opposites, or in Choice of the Vampire, where Superstition and Rationalism are opposites. If you use this technique, you’ll still need to make sure you sometimes check to see whether Superstition is high, and sometimes check to see whether Superstition is low.

Note that it’s much more natural to have opposite personality traits (e.g. Cynicism vs. Naiveté) than it is to have opposite skills. (Why does my strength decrease whenever I get smarter?) This is another reason why you shouldn’t only have skills in your list of stats.

WARNING: It’s surprisingly easy to mistakenly write a stat that’s completely useless; we’ve done it almost every time we’ve written a game. We start off with a list of stats when we begin writing, then discover at some point that we never really used one of our planned stats. For example, when we began writing Choice of the Dragon, we planned to have a Loyalty stat, measuring whether your goblin and human servants would do your bidding, but we turned out not to need it. Useless stats make the game a lot less fun for your players, so be sure to fix them as soon as you notice them.

Rule 7: Get Creative

We try to avoid the traditional RPG stats (strength, dexterity, intelligence, charisma), partly because they’re all skills (what’s good about having a low strength?) and partly because they’re overdone.

Instead, see if you can come up with more unusual stats for your game, or at least unusual names.

One of our favorite reviews of Choice of the Dragon wrote, “That’s right. This game has a f*cking disdain meter. Seriously. It actually keeps track of how much you don’t give a sh!t about puny humans and their laughable ways. Racking up those disdain points gave me way more joy than a 20-minute long multiple choice adventure game has any right to, and for that I raise my leathery wing to it in a salute.”

Here’s a few stats you may not have considered:

Sycophancy

Seduction

Courtesy

Blood Pressure

Shame

Temperance

Popularity

Retentiveness

Sheen

Snark

Proprioception

Tidiness

Thrift

Filth

Blasphemy

Introspection

Imagination

Gluttony

Weight

Torque

Logistics

Fate

And that’s not even considering any of the thousands of unusual skills your game might include.（source:choiceofgames）