[QuikSand]

Roll Your Own Spouse

I figure many people here are former RPG players – many probably started with the well-known standby D&D, what with its clever little system of character attributes to help represent a character’s varied strengths and weaknesses. I thought this might be an interesting exercise… using the same kind of “language” to instead measure a somewhat more important “character” – a potential, or even ideal, spouse.

(And by my universal use of "spouse" I just mean lifelong romantic partner - however you choose to maintain or identify that relationship is up to the two of you.)

So, here’s the setup – deliberately patterned after the character creation model in D&D:


Your spouse for a lifetime will be defined in terms of six attributes. Each will be graded on a scale from 3 to 18, with 18 representing the highest possible value, and 3… well, you get the idea. A score of 10 is generally considered “average” among the population in that respect.

Here are the six attributes:

PER – Yes, “she has a great personality” is a blind date cliché, but there’s no doubt that personality goes a long way. This encompasses things like sense of humor, conversational skills, pleasantness, good manners, and all that sort of thing.

HOT – Doubtless, one of the things we seek in a mate—either for biologically ingrained reasons or those more hedonistic—is, for lack of a better term, hotness. This encompasses physical appearance, presentation, and the general feminine wiles (or the masculine equivalent, if that’s the gender you’re building).

INT – Yes, we will actually double up with D&D here, and consider intelligence as its own characteristic. This includes actual knowledge, but also things like perspective, intuition, education (to some degree), and eloquence.

MOM – Here we attempt to wrap together the various maternal gifts (or, once again, their male equivalents, if that’s the gender you’re building). Here we include care for children and family, tending for sick, and even other domestic skills like cooking, cleaning, handiwork, killing bugs, whatever is suitable for the mate of your gender.

BED – We include here the range of more private matters, under the rubric bedroom. We seek to go past desirability (located elsewhere), but rather will include things like sexual aggressiveness, interest, adventurousness, and…er... “ability.”

SUP – Here we include the ability to support you and/or your family. This might range from the degree of education and valuable skills in the workplace, to the degree of interest in spending time at work – but could also include possessed resources from other means.



Okay – The Challenge.

Now, you get to build your own perfect mate, using the six characteristics set forth above. We’ll do this using a system something like what we see in online gaming (NWN and the like) – a “resource point” system giving you the flexibility you want.

You will start with a “blank slate” spouse with a rating of 10 in everything, plus you have 20 “resource points” to use to enhance her or him. Here’s how you spend your budget of resource points:

It costs 1 resource point to increase any skill by one point to a number as high as 14
It costs 2 resource points to increase any skill by one point to a number of 15 or 16
It costs 3 resource points to increase any skill by one point to a number of 17 or 18
You gain back a resource point by reducing any skill by a point below 10
You gain a bonus resource point if you reduce a skill below 6

If you prefer, here’s a simple list of the “cost” for each possible attribute value:

18 costs 14
17 costs 11
16 costs 8
15 costs 6
14 costs 4
13 costs 3
12 costs 2
11 costs 1
10 costs nothing
9 gives back 1
8 gives back 2
7 gives back 3
6 gives back 4
5 gives back 6
4 gives back 8
3 gives back 10


Your final mate, using this system, must work within the rules above – you may use 20 resource points to make adjustments, netting out the costs of increases and any gains from decreases.

This, of course, is a purely hypothetical exercise – not intended to lessen the importance, value, or self-esteem of any current or prospective spouses or significant others of readers or participants. Any inadvertent result along those lines is the fault of the author, and is sincerely regretted. In the event that this becomes an issue, I'd suggest that the savvy FOFC participant already has a spouse or SO with ratings far in excess of the limitations here - so this exercise would represent "settling" for something far less than he or she already has. Whew.