Strength

In order to combat the consequences of a duel love of programming and donuts, for the past several months I have been engaging in some strength training. I thought it would be interesting to apply what I''ve learned to game design, in particular, RPG design. Strength or Str, has long been a core statistic of RPGs, and with good reason. From dragon slaying to bending bars, nearly every physical activity can benefit from increased strength. Stronger muscles also means stronger bones and connective tissue. This makes an individual more resistant to injury, from both internal and external sources. An individual''s base strength is determined by two things, genetics (die rolls) and lifestyle (character class). Just as fighters tend to be stronger than mages, farmers and dockworkers tend to be stronger than programmers. But all is not lost for our mage/programmer. Unlike D&D, there exist some options for strength gain that doesn''t involve a major lifestyle/class change. First, magic potions to increase strength do exist. As long as you don''t mind side effects such as extreme body acne, breast tissue growth, and testicular shrinkage, steroids/potions will boost your strength so long as you keep taking them. For those who wish to keep their genitals from shrinking, strength training is an option. The first thing to realize is that your body does not really want to increase its muscular mass. Muscles are a metabolically expensive tissue and way back when, during our evolution, food was nowhere as plentiful as it is today. To get stronger, you have to convince your body that more muscle is a good idea. To do this, you have to provide a stimulus that will overcome your body''s tendency to keep muscles at a minimum. Lifting weights is a a great way to do this. But two other things are needed. Good nutrition is absolutly essential. A balanced mix of protein, carbohydrates and fat (yes, fat) will provide your body with the means to build strength. The final ingredient is rest. It is only during rest that strength actually increases. Your body needs time to properly build strength. If you deny your body this time by working out everyday, you will actually end up losing muscle mass, and you will become mroe prone to injury and illness. Skill based games such as Ultima Online that allowed players to build strength by macroing skills endlessly could benefit by requiring a rest period to get the strength gains. Ok, here is some ideas to apply the above to a game. Characters are given a genetic maximium strength that is kept hidden. Their base strength is displayed, and a player can estimate their potential from this value, but they will not know just how strong they can be. Over the course of an adventure, the game tracks a characters actions and determines how much the character was pushing their abilites. After the adventure, when the character is back in town recovering from the ordeal, that is when their strength will increase. This system would reward characters for pushing their skills to the max during gameplay, instead of blind macroing. It would allow for steady progression for both the causal and core player and the hidden "genetic" maximum would allow a greater diversty in characters. Korven