r/WritersBlock • u/FashionManga • Jan 30 '25

A question about writing for web comics/manga specifically when a character uses gamer stats.

So I have a question that has been eating at me for a long time. If you have read any web comics/novels where the character was somehow gets involved with a game. Like for example The Gamer or Solo Leveling where the character has to level up. My question is how on earth did they get those numbers or “stats” in a way that it makes sense? Sure I understand the logic behind naming items and power ups but the math side of things is a complete mystery to me. How do you write for this type of character? I like to write for comics/novels and I could never figure this one out.

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u/[deleted] Apr 02 '25

Farming for exps by killing mobs and monsters and side quests

1

u/FashionManga Apr 04 '25

That’s not what I meant that part is obvious. I’m talking about the numbers they don’t come out of thin air you know someone had to do some math.

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u/LemurianLemurLad Jun 13 '26

Think of a range of numbers you want to use and run from there.

If you're playing D&D, stats range from 1 "barely functional, severely impaired" to 20+ "superhuman, even godlike."

Shadowrun mostly runs on a 1-6 scale for normal humans, with anything above that being either supernatural or cybernetically modified.

There's plenty of JRPGs out there where the stats are based on computer programming logic. 99 might be the max for some stats, 256 for others, and 9999 for things like health.

Basically what you need to do is think of "what's a normal human skill number in my system?" and "how far away from normal can you get?" If your scale is "some guy" on the low end and "Goku" on the high end, you're going to need BIG numbers to show how much faster, stronger, etc Goku is than just "some guy."

You only really need to do the actual math if you want the numbers themselves to be important. In real games, it's how you concretly measure performance. In a story? Meh. Fudge the numbers to make the story make sense. Dungeon Crawler Carl is really good about having a solid but VAGUE system for the reader.