Game in the Brain

RPG Science: Physical performance with armor and other loads found this by way of Jay Dugger in G+.

So what can you do with this findings? Well go back to wikipedia and refresh your understanding of the definition of WORK and POWER. Which I actually have been doing, because of my little project I have not yet advertised:

Open Source / Creative Common RPG Definitions. Basically I’ve made my own definitions for skills, abilities, traits,etc.. that is free to be used in any game (with attribution). I use science-y definitions and abstractions, hoping that no-one could copyright something as basic as approaching RPGS with science – in light the suing of 2011-2012.

Basically what it does is try to use basic science metrics and some easy math to make sense of some RPG concepts and ideas.

Example is that
Strength is equal to WORK. I’ll use biometrics of a soldier in my military studies to benchmark above average.
Endurance is equal to POWER. Again using soldiers and the published documentation about them to create a scientific and open source approach to stat definitions.

Intelligence is an over-all tricky thing to stat, what I can do is create a Subcategory of Intelligence Aptitudes.

I’ll be defining skills from those specialized, to those very basic and a taken-for-granted part of our education.  Also there will be space to put notes regarding settings, like how some skills disappear or do not exist yet or anymore.

I think these definitions should be easy to share, and easy to tweak. If I don’t get burned out and the rate I tend to work, in a couple of years there should be enough data for anyone to quickly put together their very own game system (I’ll try to make an open library of dice or arbitrary number mechanics) for their use. If the cost of putting together a kick-ass RPG goes down, then game developers just keep pushing forward making more and more material and contributing to a shared database.

People will still buy the product, because of the ease to make them and the convenience and low cost compared if they had to take the time to make it themselves. The common and shared database of mechanics, expertise and tools, is Infrastructure that one can build over. Allowing creatives to focus on Art, Story, designing the challenges, etc… and not have to worry about the mechanics.

It allows for more open system content, since it has created a baseline that is scientific, thus evolving and improving constantly.