So I was working on something¹ and in doing some edits/revisions, I decided I needed eight elements for a RPG and DnD-adjacent …um, thing and settled on stone, metal, water, wood, flame, wind, and guile.²

I guess I still need an eighth but its fantasy so stars and/or dragons or quintessence or… no.

No, seven is fine. That’s a decent set of six + the seventh is already a stretch; no need to go for the hail mary pass on top of what’s already a stretch.

Guile is a great word. Quite flavorful. Not used much. Has maybe a negative connotation but that’s fine too, I can work within that as a constraint.

The term I was leaning toward before finding guile was just… Magic. Generic “magic”. Super basic and boring.

What I wanted was ~Magic~ but also in the sense of Art. Tékhnē. Works. Craft. Mage-Craft. Also with a sense of invention, discovery, innovation, and science. Something to embrace spells and potions and clockwork and crafts like blacksmithing, as opposed to just the usual amorphous cosmic preexisting always-there force kinda sense to magic. Elemental Guile, which works for the project just fine.³

But man, guile is such a good word. Let’s see where else that might take us:

What if we add Guile to the ‘standard’ set of six attributes. I’d position it as the spellcasting attribute – cunning, craft, wile, artifice, insight; to be inventive, imaginative, creative, innovative, ingenious, artful; to be deft, clever, shrewd, sly, subtle; to have perception, comprehension, acuity; to devise, contrive, improvise, and invent.

Intelligence is a mix of potential, aptitude, and learned knowledge. Wisdom a mix of insight, empathy, and self-mastery. Charisma a mix of assurance, persuasion, and appeal.

I’d set Guile as being equal to any of those and equivalently relevant.

##

If I were to go back to a different set of old notes⁴, at one point I was thinking on the standard set of six stats and also, being kind of disappointed in them? At the same time, I was entertaining the random idea of writing a RPG source book using Wikipedia⁵. Possibly because I was relying on Wikipedia for a lot of preliminary research⁶. Anyway, if I go back to those notes, I found that Guile slotted right into place. Almost like I was always meant to add it.

I present these notes with some light formatting but also with the disclaimer – I’m going for a low-effort post today so these are just notes: equivalent to pre-first-draft and more about getting the ideas down on paper⁷ than getting everything formatted⁸ and in perfect prose. With that caveat I Present:

10 alternate RPG attributes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_(role-playing_games)

Strength
Endurance
Hardiness
Agility
Deftness

Resolve
Wisdom
Intelligence
Charisma
Guile

Strength
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_strength
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(running)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_training
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_exercise

Endurance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiorespiratory_fitness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-distance_running
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobic_exercise

Hardiness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_fitness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_density
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liver#Functions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immune_system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wound_healing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_repair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_healing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_tissue_injury
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injury
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease

Agility
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agility
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_(ability)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_coordination
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexibility_(anatomy)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_intelligence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory#Physiology

Deftness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_motor_skill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye-hand_coordination
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambidexterity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_memory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory#Fine_motor_memory

Resolve
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardiness_(psychology)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coping
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_resilience

Wisdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_sense
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patience
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy

Intelligence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptitude
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_memory

Charisma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charisma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superficial_charm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_skills
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence

Guile
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discernment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-obviousness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_solving

“Your character may have 18 INT but you, my friend, are as dumb as a bag of hammers”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning

The 5 Physical and 5 Mental Attributes can be thought of as parallel and corresponding. mostly. kinda-sort-of

Strength/Resolve
Wisdom/Endurance
Intelligence/Hardiness
Agility/Charisma
& Deftness/Guile

On Agility and Deftness: “A person with high Agility (i.e. good reflexes) will be able to put a hand up when thrown a ball; a person with low Deftness (i.e. bad hand-eye coordination) will have their hand up but not catch it”

On Endurance and Hardiness: “Endurance is running a marathon. Hardiness is surviving the flu.”

“Pick two” – Most DND abilities combine two of these traits (or aspects of two)

• ‘Constitution’ as Endurance and Hardiness
• Or ‘Strength’ as Strength and Endurance
• Dexterity as Agility & Deftness
• ‘Wisdom’ as Wisdom & Resolve
• ‘Charisma’ as Charisma & Guile
• Or ‘Intelligence’ as Intelligence & Guile

Claiming copyright over this set-of-10 would be difficult (and probably not enforceable) & so: I don’t. CC BY-SA 4.0 like the rest of the blog but I’m only asking politely; effectively as common terms in English the list is CC0. Well, “guile” isn’t that common in English anymore but that was kind of my point, way up there at the start. It’s a great word. Feel free to steal it off me.

¹ I half-remembered some notes from, I kid you not, twenty freakin’ years ago and yes, I have been transferring them from archive to archive and PC to laptop to laptop to PC and to my current rig. I was using OpenOffice (or maybe even excel?) back in 2002, instead of LibreOffice and Google Docs, but I still have them.

² Sky/Stars was the original 7th, I added Guile (over Magic) as the 8th, & then made the executive decision to pare back down to seven.

³ It is a tarot-style deck of cards and the seven elements are suits in a minor arcana. Yes, with seven suits it’ll end up as a double deck [78×2 = 156]

⁴ these are just from 2020, not 2002.

⁵ I don’t know what I was drinking at the time, but it was merely alcoholic. Not anything stronger.

⁶ …as one does. Not the best way to do research — and of course, you should find a 2nd/backup/reinforcing and perhaps better source before you rely on wiki for anything vital, but wiki is (true to name) fast and with all the cross-links and linked sources (where available), it’s a decent enough place to start.

⁷ Like most of us, I do almost everything from a keyboard into digital files but ya get me

⁸ This includes turning those links from text back into links. Ain’t nobody here got time for that, you are perfectly capable of ctrl-c ctrl-v if you really needed to get there.