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getting close to completed system!!! yayayaya yet I have fallen into the trap of stats that I need. While most at my house wonder what insane daddy is doing, I get little help here, the rest of my gaming group are meh and wish to play diplomacy. So I am here alone with my design pal at uni in China going around and around in circles on stats.

I currently have

Body
Psychology

and I am stumped ...... hope? is the best i can come up with. Or is two more than enough. The system asks the player to couple a skill and attribute together, they have to be able to explain the combo so Body and mechanical repair does not come up often.

When it comes to three stat systems, the grail seems to be physical/mental/meta-physical. Big Eyes Small Mouth used "Body Mind Soul" and then of course there is the game "Warrior, Rouge, and Mage" that uses those three concepts as the only stats. The one page game Adventurer uses Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence.

World of Darkness has nine stats, but they are divided into three categories. As I recall, they are Social, physical, and mental - and each of these have an Active, reactive, and passive use (such as strength, reflexes, stamina, for physical I think)

There have been a few games with only two stats like "Extreme Vengeance" and "Paranoia". Far more games tend towards the six established by D&D.

If you can tell me a bit more about the setting, I might be better able to fill in some ideas.

As a general rule, I dislike only 2 stats as it results in only 3 character types: heavy stat 1, heavy stat 2, balanced. Sure, there are levels of how extreme the imbalance is but it results in less variety.

I think Aardvark has covered it well. You usually have, mental, physical, other. What the other should be is determined by the game's intent. It could be psychic ability, schmooze power, bureaucracy, energy/excitement, ability to see quantum entanglement, etc.

With combat heavy games, I like to break body down to strength and dexterity (names can vary). Warrior, Rogue, Mage does this as the 3 abilities roughly correspond to strength, dexterity, and intelligence, respectively (though with extra career implications).

The amount of attributes needed depends on the game. 3-16 uses two: fighting and non-fighting. A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaing has 17, not including the attributes of the nobel houses.

The more complex the system is suposed to be, the more attributes can be used.

How about this for an idea - there are only two or three stats, but they're broken into some sort of sub-categories or opposed elements, a bit like Star Frontiers or the wheels of ICAR.

So for example, the mind has resilience and adaptability - one that represents moral, sureness, and attitude, while the other represents learning and thinking outside the box. However, if you are two strongly opinionated, you are not open to new things, and if your too aware you begin to get stressed or go crazy.

Alternately, you could go ID and Ego for mental traits - creativity and awareness vs methodical methods and stability.

This old freebie called might have some good inspiration for the military/espionage game you were working on a while ago. The rules for "Stress and Hardening" (towards the bottom) are also good examples of the trait dichotomy.

I've been tending toward three metaphysical attributes lately, and tailoring characters purely around traits.

The attributes define how well you make things, how well you destroy things, and how well you change things. Positive activity could be physically beneficial (building an object), socially beneficial (building morale), mentally beneficial (concocting a theory, solving a puzzle), psychically beneficial...negative actions could be the same way defined (physical might involve dealing injury, social might involve insults, mental might involve shooting down someone else's theories)...transformative actions might change spare parts into useful items, or manipulate someone's intended course of action.

The whole point here is that the attributes define how the character manipulates the story. Are they good at adding elements to play? Are they good are removing elements from play? Are they good at transforming the elements in the story?

It's just another way to look at things.

The main question I'd consider is "What is this game about?" If it's about say going through catacombs, killing monsters and taking stuff, then you could have a catacomb stat, a killing stat and looting stat. If it's about hobnobing with royalty at parties, well. . . you get the idea.

Distill the game you want to make to it's core. The more things you add, the less punch it will have but the more versatile it will be. If you want a more versatile game, you'll probably need more stats.

I like CA's suggestion of splitting off the attributes into trees. Maybe that could be a form of advancement? You can specialize an attribute and make it a rank better? That way, the complexity is eliminated to start but the versatility emerges over time.

In The Artifact I have ten attributes but they're grouped under Physical, Functional, and Mental categories.