I tried to pick the stats with both theme and gameplay in mind.
A key theme of the forthcoming Choice of Rebels is that when you’re in revolt against e.g. an evil fantasy Empire, it’s often non-obvious where to stop rebelling, or whether you even can. Where does a corrupt social order retain some value, and how much can you destroy before you lose the ability to build back? What if anything does your rebel leader MC value as a source of social order?
The game’s three opposed stats are all centered around major potential sources of social order – nationalism (or cosmopolitanism), religiosity (or skepticism), and ruthlessness (or compassion). These values affect every stage of the rebellion, not just the rebuilding (which we won’t get to for a few games yet). And, importantly, I find each one fun to write. There are interesting trade-offs and dilemmas and colorful outworkings for each side of the stat.
There’s also an Anarchy stat which is visible as a number on the stat screen (zero, at the beginning). Other important variables like notoriety and morale aren’t ever shown to the player as numbers; they’re periodically suggested in the text, so the reader gets a sense of whether morale is e.g. strong or dismal, but not whether it’s 2 points away from some critical threshold. That’s because the artificiality of having too many stats in precise number form (rather than described in text) can be immersion-weakening for me. But the level of Anarchy you create is so vital to the theme that I want it visible to the player throughout the game.
I also included three skill stats – combat, intellect, and charisma – because I thought they could lead to fun variability in the gameplay. There are distinctive ways of rebelling as a great general, an effective user of the world’s best thinking & technology (in this case, magic), or a charismatic leader; writing three different specialisms feels like it should be manageable. And as Gower suggests, the choice of stats here also signposts that if you like fantasy RPGs, you should give this a try. (Nothing like calling one of your stats “charisma” to give the game away.)