Dan & Paul scope out principles for statting out real people in D&D and other role-playing games. What do the standard ability scores really mean, anyway? How have they varied over editions of D&D across the years? And how can we compare and model real people in other games like Call of Cthulhu, Star Frontiers, and Fearful Ends?

Kinanthropometry is defined as the study of human size, shape, proportion, composition, maturation, and gross function, in order to understand growth, exercise, performance, and nutrition.

It is a scientific discipline that is concerned with the measurement of individuals in a variety of morphological perspectives, its application to movement and those factors which influence movement, including: components of body build, body measurements, proportions, composition, shape and maturation; motor abilities and cardiorespiratory capacities; physical activity including recreational activity as well as highly specialized sports performance. The predominant focus is upon obtaining detailed measurements upon the body composition of a given person.

Kinanthropometry is the interface between human anatomy and movement. It is the application of a series of measurements made on the body and from these we can use the data that we gather directly or perform calculations using the data to produce various indices and body composition predictions and to measure and describe physique.

Read Dan's article on D&D Intelligence and IQ

This description uses material from the Wikipedia article "Kinanthropometry", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.