This week, I've been working on a series of breakdowns of Fallout; I focus primarily on the first game in the series, though I stray to the other games as it becomes helpful for the sake of analysis.

Today I'm going to be examining perks and traits, two systems that function almost identically in Fallout but which are part of the game's lasting appeal; many of the perks in Fallout (like Bloody Mess) or traits (like Wild Wasteland) are iconic features of the series.

If you haven't checked out Part 1, you should probably do so now. Many of the terms I use are defined there, and I explain concepts such as the notion of a "layer" of game mechanics there as well.

Perks and traits are interesting in Fallout; they do have some clear mechanical distinguishers, at least in the original games, but there are also a lot of commonalities.

Both perks and traits are different from the SPECIAL and Skills layers; while the former have a fixed sets of scales, each perk or trait has its own unique effect. This is something that is an important part of understanding their role in the game mechanics.

From a narrative standpoint, a game designer making a game like Fallout wants the mechanics of the game to match the feeling of the world that is being displayed by the game. The SPECIAL and Skills layers are designed to mimic elements of reality, reflecting a general sense of ability, but they have the limitation of being parallel for every character; nobody has an additional element or altered element. It is theoretically possible for something to not have a value, but this is simply making it exist outside the system.

With perks and traits, the opposite is true: characters are defined in a mechanical sense by which of these elements they have, which is a similarity, but it is generally the rule that characters in the system do not have a particular perk or trait until they get it.

These sorts of layers work well to create heavily defined individual characters, and also to let players fulfill a gameplay niche that would be difficult to enable with existing layers. While a scalar layer like SPECIAL or Skills is generally made up of broad elements so that the number of elements in those layers remains comprehensible and each element is useful, a tag layer like perks and traits lets the player make decisions about meaningfully specific interactions that would be otherwise ignored due to the breadth of each scale in a layer.

Perks

Perks have three common elements:

1. They alter a normal formula or game rule.
2. They are available to be gained during play.
3. They have the ability to interact with any of the play layers, but typically focus on derived statistics.

A perk does something that gives a character a direct benefit, like seeing better in darkness (which matters in a few different circumstances: combat, fine manipulation in dark areas, etc.), and this by extension alters the way the game can be played. It is theoretically possible for a perk to directly influence any element of the game, giving a character a distinct advantage, but typically the philosophy behind perks is that they should add something that is not a direct benefit that can be gained elsewhere.

For instance, even a perk that just gives a character an extra SPECIAL point would be giving quite a boost to a number of values, becoming mechanically interesting, but it might compete with a perk that gives bonus hit points for the character, allowing them to survive longer in combat. The bonus hit points would have to be balanced to compete against an increase to an attribute, but this would enable a player to make a meaningful choice if properly informed and balanced, enabling the pursuit of different play-styles.

Perks often have a special requirement, often drawn from the SPECIAL layer or Skills layer (or both simultaneously) before they can be unlocked. This allows some sanity testing: you don't want a character built in such a way to be deficient in hit points as a consequence of exceptional abilities in other areas to be able to boost their hit points and ignore the penalty, since that would potentially damage the balance of the game. Of course, if this is a conscious decision and well balanced, it could be an intentional addition only enabled by the perk layer and its interactions with other layers. It may even be the case that the same result can be achieved in different ways, or multiple ways simultaneously for additional effect, and a perk is one of many routes to the result.

Traits

Traits differ from perks in two ways:

1. They can generally only be gained at character creation, and are optional.
2. They have bonuses and penalties (or other unusual effects).

Traits are interesting because they're theoretically value neutral; they provide players with an alternate set of rules that they can use to play the game, from adding in wacky content (Wild Wasteland) to making characters have better SPECIAL attributes and weaker skills (Gifted).

Titles

Titles are worth noting, though there aren't enough of them to make them a distinctive layer on their own, they are a shared sublayer along with perks and traits.

1. They are earned during play as a consequence of player choices.
2. They don't carry any cost to the player, and are gained automatically.

For reference, a character who does good actions and kills a lot of bad guys will gain the Champion title.

Generally titles are just used for NPC interactions, but they're an important element of how the game works: rather than necessarily just checking if a player has done a particular action, a title can be used to generally assess a player's choices (a karma system exists as well in some versions of the game, which just measures the balance of good/evil actions).

The Role of Tags

Each of these systems relies on a series of tags: a value that is theoretically universal, but which is only applied to certain characters. In Fallout, the game's mechanical universe is player-centric, which means that these systems don't necessarily apply to NPCs that may be found throughout the game.

However, since the player's character is both distinctive enough to warrant these features and there is an emphasis on allowing the player to engage in character customization as a core of the design philosophy, these tags allow players to tailor their experience.

Even more-so than with scalar layers, a tag layer can be used to direct a pathway through content and deliver dynamic responses.

The reason for this is that at any point a perk, trait, or title can be used to check the mechanical representation of a player's character with a narrative expectation for that character. If I want to know if a character has Sex Appeal, I can just look to see if they have that particular trait.

Now, there are natural downsides to this system, but they can be solved by a clever designer. It may be necessary to check multiple different sublayers or multiple individual tags when building a gate (a point at which one event or another occurs), but this is trivial compared to what has to be done to reference arbitrary amounts of previous events from a programming or scripting standpoint.

Likewise, in tabletop roleplaying games, these systems are actually quite useful because they can be adapted, and in non-refereed games they still have their own purposes in having a quick distinction: Magic the Gathering is an example of a game that uses a tag layer to define not only card types, linking them to particular mechanics, but also when to apply certain rules within those card types.

It is also possible to have scalar tags, which are added to a character but may also exist at multiple levels. This allows for a more comprehensible set of possible tags and more design opportunities.

Wrapping Up

The perks and traits of Fallout give the designers an opportunity to include things that don't fit in any other layer while still keeping the system comprehensible.

A tag layer added to a game design permits a designer to make very local effects available for particular game entities, without sacrificing the potential benefits of other layer types, like scalar layers and foundation layers.

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You can find Part 2 of this series through this link, and Part 3 through this one.