Silly-ish Poll
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So this was spawned by a conversation earlier about the term 'dump stat' and I'd like to see where people lie (as the person and I knew it in different contexts).
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I have always heard it used as the one you have the lowest number in. From the olden days of random char gen it was the stat you dumped your worst roll in.
Not sure when it first came into use but I know I heard it used that way when I was in junior high so mid-late 80s. -
@ThatGuyThere said in Silly-ish Poll:
I have always heard it used as the one you have the lowest number in. From the olden days of random char gen it was the stat you dumped your worst roll in.
Not sure when it first came into use but I know I heard it used that way when I was in junior high so mid-late 80s.That's how I always used it!
But I was chatting with someone and mentioned upping a PC's Presence, 'Because it's my dump stat' and he goes, 'I don't think that means what you think it means.'
And turns out to him, 'dump stat' is the one you put the most points in. I had never, ever heard it like that before. We've both played TT and MU*d for a similar number of years, in similar genres, but we also grew up in the same region, so I don't think it's "regional."
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
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TV Tropes sees it our way, though that is not really the best source.
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It always means 'the one you put the least points into'.
He has the meaning backwards. Charisma is a dump stat.
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@Admiral said in Silly-ish Poll:
It always means 'the one you put the least points into'.
He has the meaning backwards. Charisma is a dump stat.
I told him about the poll and he was worried I was doing it to prove that I'm right.
![😕](http://musoapbox.net/assets/plugins/nodebb-plugin-emoji/emoji/android/1f615.png?v=4vfms5ns7sl ":\")
I honestly couldn't remember where I'd begun hearing the term and had really wondered if maybe there were people who used it differently than I did and if so, what correlation there may be (primarily used X system, played for a long time on Y game, etc.).
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I've heard both versions used rather a lot, though usually 'dump stat' being the 'in the dumpster' stat (it sucks, because you more or less wish you could just dump it entirely and not have to put anything there) and 'dumping points into a stat' as the one that costs you dearly because you spent too much on it.
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@Auspice I've had people say similar that the dump stat is the one you put the points into, though for me it has always been the one you put the least points in.
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Yeah, I always use 'dump stat/skill' to refer to XP sinks, stuff that does very little mechanics-wise or is really circumstantial.
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Is it a regional thing? This is the first I've come across people saying a dump stat is their high one.
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@SG said in Silly-ish Poll:
Is it a regional thing? This is the first I've come across people saying a dump stat is their high one.
Probably a cultural thing. I mean on some games there might not even be useless stats due to the mechanics, in which case the dump stat becomes the one they pour spare points in.
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"Dump stat" for me came from playing D&D and Pathfinder, where it was like, I rolled a bunch of stats and the shittiest stat was the one I didn't need, so that was the 'dump' stat. So when I'm playing a barbarian, int is my dump stat. In which I dumped that useless 10. Or whatever.
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I've always been part of the group that calls their lowest stat, the one that their concept just doesn't need, the dump stat.
And for @ThatGuyThere -- not only does TV Tropes agree with us, but also Urban Dictionary and 1d4chan (although I'm not sure that the last one is a good thing -- there are a significant number of people with Charisma and Wisdom over there, from what I've seen).
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@SG said in Silly-ish Poll:
Is it a regional thing? This is the first I've come across people saying a dump stat is their high one.
If it's regional, it'd be more 'regions of the internet' than RL. The person the convo originally came up with, we grew up within the same city/county and even (at different times) gamed with the same club at a school.
That is why I wanted to ask here. Usually I would write it off as a regional quirk, but it's doubtful that'd be the case in this situation.
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I'd always seen it used as a stat that you're getting purely for character reasons, that you don't expect to use. Which is a different meaning entirely. (Like putting points into Drive, if you're nWoD.)
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@reimesu said in Silly-ish Poll:
I'd always seen it used as a stat that you're getting purely for character reasons, that you don't expect to use. Which is a different meaning entirely. (Like putting points into Drive, if you're nWoD.)
It is! That's totally a new one on me.
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Yeah, I've always thought of it as the 'fluff' stat. The one you have that never gets used. Politics, Socialize, Science, even Animal Ken... to a lesser extent, most of the Social skills outside of Empathy/Intimidation/Persuasion/Streetwise/Subterfuge tend to be thought of as 'dump' stats.
