Dump Stat is a playful parody of the tyranny of skill checks in the Dungeons and Dragons lineage of TTRPGs. It’s still pretty rough; I’ve only run a single playtest. But it’s also a silly two-pager, so I see no problem with talking through the decisions I made and the changes I’m considering. The PDF is available for free, so please grab a copy and follow along!
The basic pitch of Dump Stat is that you’ll play out a scenario where the players don’t know what their stats actually are, only that their better at some than others. During the scenario, they’ll try to glean more about how the GM is interpreting their actions in order to better address their goals in the scenario and construct a guess at what their character’s “build” might be. At the end, players assign themselves a snappily-named Archetype (like a class or playbook) and then all is revealed. Let’s get into some of the details!
What’s the big idea behind this game?
Ultimately, Dump Stat is a game about the interpretive calculus of mechanics of skill checks and the ever-present temptation towards metagaming—which can often be good fun!
Players declare what their characters are attempting in the fiction, but only the GM can map those actions onto the mechanical procedure that follows. Meanwhile, the GM does their best to interpret those actions both creatively and consistently. During the scenario, both parties are hyperconscious of the imperfect process of translating fiction into mechanics.
Dump Stat then encourages players to prioritize the metagame goal over the in-fiction one, the opposite of typical play advice. One-shots are always a good opportunity to play recklessly and curiously; having a mystery to solve external to the fiction helps to intensify that impulse. There’s fun to be had in smashing the action figures together and seeing what happens.
Where does the title come from?
The term “dump stat” is the popular vernacular for a stat or skill that’s brought as low as possible in order to allocate resources (and thus competence) to some other skill that’s core to a character. Traditionally, your “dump stat” is the thing you’re bad at and don’t plan to use. But since you don’t know what it is you’re good at in this game, you’ll have to experiment to find out which is which. It’s also a familiar phrase that evokes a sense of metagaming intention, so I think it puts players in the right mindset.
The initial title was Mincing Words, which I felt was mediocre. While the GM will certainly use evasive language, the idiom of “mincing words” doesn’t really fit the zanier tone of the game. “Dump Stat” is still a poor descriptor of what the game is, but I do think it’s an improvement. I’m sure there’s still a name I like better out there somewhere.
Why NOUN, VERB, and ADJECTIVE?
Truthfully, the answer is that I have a pet peeve about games that use inconsistent parts of speech for their stats. It’s a very silly thing to be hung up on. So I made a game that does it loudly and on purpose.
Ultimately, though, it doesn’t much matter exactly what they are. The point is to have categories that are distinct, that won’t reveal anything on their own, but can be filled with pretty much any words that might function as stats or skills in other games. The game text could certainly be clearer about how these function, though. In my mind, I think of them as “slots” that have hidden contents, to be revealed at the end. Maybe I can work that metaphor into the text.
One other benefit of using parts of speech is that it calls to mind Mad Libs, which is a helpful grounding for the intentions of this game. The chosen words should be arbitrary, zany, and surprising when encountered in context.
Why do the players contribute words to the pool? Why not have the GM choose?
I wanted to draw players in and get them invested. They’ll have a broad sense of what’s going on if they’ve glanced at the rules, so this is their chance to come up with the funniest or most intriguing word they can think of.
Choosing from a narrow pool of options makes the GM’s job more straightforward than if they had to choose any 3 words for themselves. Meanwhile, giving that same blank canvas to the players is less troublesome, since it doesn’t affect their own mental overhead so directly. Players can focus on picking something funny or strange, and the GM can focus on building a set of 3 that’s both interesting and manageable. I like the way this splits the responsibility.
Another limitation I’ve seen so far is that the number of players affects whose words get chosen. There’s a possibility that this game might be best played with a number of available stats derived from the number of players, so each player can know that one of their contributions will be selected. With a GM and 2 players, it would be only “noun” and “verb”, and with a GM and 4 players, you’d potentially add an “adverb”. But I worry that this both increases the GM’s cognitive load and muddies the water with a less-well-understood part of speech.
Character creation is really thin; how will players find ways to make their characters distinct?
Naturally, a character built out of virtually nothing (players choose which part of speech to be good at, but they don’t know what the words are) might feel too empty to play. This is where Roles come in. The inclusion of Roles—and the way that the Scenarios tend to imply at least a couple of different roles—allows this change. If I expand on this, I might just outright include a list of suggested roles next to each scenario as a third column. That would help players ground quickly themselves, and it should also imply further variations of the scenario where different sets of roles chosen.
Regardless, the key idea with Roles is to give players a clear responsibility in the fiction. If they have a specialization, they‘ll know when their character should be stepping up to the plate in the story, and it helps suggest ways to share the spotlight. Since a Role is more like a job than an identity or skillset, it also gives the characters room to be bad at their assigned specialty without it seeming like they’re fundamentally a fuck-up. Since they’re guaranteed to be good at something, the trick is more about figuring out what that is and how to best use it.
Isn’t this a lot for the GM to juggle?
Well, yes and no! The most unusual task you’ll have as the GM is to keep your chosen stats secret, because that’s the core meta-mystery of the game. Much of the GM advice on the second page is geared towards helping them focus on the important bits. Players will want to be able to try a variety of approaches, both to keep things interesting and to suss out what their stats mean. All the GM needs to do is remember the stats, keep things moving, and try to provide challenges that can be addressed from multiple angles.
It’s possible that this game would benefit from more procedure for running the scenarios, but I’d still want to keep it light. Since there are goals beyond just keeping the scenario on track, it’s important that the structure stays flexible.
How come the game doesn’t end with the players guessing the stats?
Rather than have players directly guess what the stats are, I wanted to give them a way to encapsulate their theories in something that’s distinctively their interpretation. Assigning an Archetype lets them channel their guesses into something that might feel true for them even if it turns out that they were way off base.
Each player knows which words they contributed, but unless there’s exactly 3 or fewer players, there’s no guarantee that any of their words was chosen. Though players are encouraged to theorize, I wanted to blunt the possible bad feeling of not having any of your words chosen.
An alternate approach would be to insist that this game be played with no more than 3 players (plus one GM), but that feels needlessly restrictive. Assigning an Archetype still feels clumsy, but it gives the player some final authority over who their character was.
Well, that was a little longer than I thought. I hope you found this interesting!