So...wut's the deal with NWP?

[Hella_Tellah]

I beg to differ. My skill system is awesome.

Can I see?

 

[S'mon]

My byline is usually, "A game needs rules for anything that the players are going to be doing a lot of. The more the players are going to be doing it, the more robust the rules need to be. The less the players are going to be doing it, the less intrusive the rules need to be."

Most of the PCs in my 1e City State of the Invincible Overlord game have sex a lot.

Yet...

There ARE NO RULES!!!

 

[rogueattorney]

1E: Secondary skills were an okay idea but too random. If they had broken up the charts by class, race or even geography (town vs wilderness) it would have been better. I never understood why my fighter/mage inland city elf had a secondary skill of sailor. It didn't fit but that was the roll so I had to keep it.

The actual rule was:

Assign a skill randomly, or select according to the background of your campaign. To determine if a second skill is known, roll on the table, and if the dice indicate a result of TWO SKILLS, then assign a second, appropriate one.

So, essentially, there was a 15% chance that a character would have two skills, and the DM could choose whether they were assigned randomly or not.

I personally think the random roll was there for those who didn't have a ready-to-go character concept (a foreign idea to many "new school" gamers, I know). I think it would be a pretty poor DM who would require the elf to keep the random "sailor" result, for example.

That said, I would have loved to have seen a secondary skills chart that was expanded as you describe and took into account race, class, region of birth, and the like. I would have found it far more satisfying than the various NWP systems introduced in later 1e books.

 

[The Shaman]

Most of the PCs in my 1e City State of the Invincible Overlord game have sex a lot.

Yet...

There ARE NO RULES!!!

Then u r dwng it rawng!


(And is there a way to give XP to Sir Robilar for his XP comment?!)

 

[The Shaman]

I personally think the random roll was there for those who didn't have a ready-to-go character concept (a foreign idea to many "new school" gamers, I know). I think it would be a pretty poor DM who would require the elf to keep the random "sailor" result, for example.

I rolled "forester" for a dwarf fighter/thief.

Up to that point I considered the character to be a dungeoneering expert, but that randomly-rolled secondary skill took me in a completely different direction, that of a dwarf "ranger" whose job in his clan was harvesting trees, for wood for crafting and charcoal for the forges.

An elf sailor could be quite interesting.

 

[rogueattorney]

An elf sailor could be quite interesting.

While I understand why the previous poster objected to a random roll that didn't fit his concept, personally, I would have immediately thought of the wood elves from the Hobbit, and figured that my sailor elf was poling barrels up and down a major river. (The entry in the DMG offers sub-options of "salt" and "fresh" water sailors.)