Abstracting your Statistics and "Pumping Iron in the Gym"
There was a rather interesting post by pacman about how you would go about abstracting statistics and methods of testing your current levels. The method that was suggested was, for example, to go to gym and lift weights to test for strength. This would mean that any time that a player wanted to see how strong they were, they would need to go and (effectively) ask the right place to tell them. I think that this would be more realistic and more interesting than just displaying a bunch of numbers on the screen. Numbers do not mean anything (unless you are a technical genius of their implied use) but a test could tell you your relative strength. If you can do 100 repetitions of a 70Kg weight, then you are probably have a strong character. If you can only do 50 repetitions of a 70Kg weight, then you are just as strong, but you have less stamina.
Murder based experience or "End Goblin Genocide"
The document could NOT be complete without this section. This is a very debatable topic on ease versus accuracy. I think that accuracy wins out in this one. A bit of background knowledge: "End Goblin Genocide" is a post (by Landfish) about the arbitrary slaying of goblins. Although it was generally about goblins, it was more loosely fitted to mean the end of a weaker race that could just be slain for experience and/or gold. Why these creatures seem to have an abundance of gold? Nobody knows. Murder based experience has taken over the games which we hold so dear and it is quite sad to see what it has been degraded to (more on this in "What's with statistics? When swordplay becomes swimming"). If your player has a specific reason, it is probably acceptable if you killed a few beasts, but for no reason other than a few gold pieces and 1 lousy experience point? It seems a little…. Murderous! A hero that goes around slaying creatures that couldn't hurt a fly isn't a hero! It's a butcher! It also becomes a little strange when your experience as a cleric (where you are a healer of people) goes against your role because you must kill creatures in order to gain that experience.
What's with statistics? When swordplay becomes swimming
Statistics have been around since the days of tabletop RPG's. They were implemented into text-based MUD's and have failed to be reduced with the coming of graphics. Statistics are what makes the whole RPG scene work, but there is far too much control by the player in how they distribute their statistical points. If I make my point by saying that the player manages to get to a new level where they can increase their statistics by killing things with a sword. They have an opportunity to increase any statistic, and they choose… Swimming. It isn't very likely that all of that hacking is going to make them better at breaststroke now is it? This is one reason why we all prefer skill-based advancement that gradually improves a certain skill as we use it. Once that skill has reached a peak, it is possible to go somewhere to train in that particular skill (to improve it) and then the same cycle starts again. No cleric goes around gaining experience from killing people! A cleric should gain experience by healing people. There is the obvious disadvantage to this system that if a player really wanted to build up a skill then they could just go out and practice it continuously. I have come up with a solution to this. When they go back to ask for a level increase, the master of the skill looks at the time length since they last visited for a raise (more importantly, the last time they got a raise) and would say "Sorry, I don't think you have had time enough to practice… Come back Wednesday" or something along those lines. This would force the player to find other things to occupy their time. It would combat powermaxing (to a certain degree) and would make the game more realistic and interesting in my view.
Skill based advancement or "Redefining the Role"
One way of looking at skill based advancement is as a method of redefining the role. The role is what the character chose to do in the beginning. If the player does something that is out of character, they should gain less experience for doing it. For example; our cleric is a very religious person; this cleric then goes out hacking Gretchin's to death. Our cleric is not going to gain strength as fast as a warrior who had done the same thing. By giving better increases in different areas of expertise, you can make a player act their role in the game.
C-Junkie
suggested that skills could be worked into a web so that there would be no need
for a character class. Instead of the character class, you have a starting character
that can choose to use certain skills and from there they can advance to use
more diverse and more specialised skills. From this you can end up with a very
diverse field of characters from one single base character… More on this
next version…
About inceasing your experience by failing. This means that
you then are able to benefit new players more than the older players. The balance
involved is quite good. See Alternative
EXP Systems?. For my reference, see Alternative
EXP Systems? 
.
Another of Nazrix
good moments 