Recent content by Thomas Shey

That actually largely changed as of 5e (maybe 4e too) because it became usually impossible to do important hacking remotely, so the hacker has to do his thing while his allies are keeping the local security off his back.

A take-10 style mechanic can, indeed, handle much of this problem as long as two things are true: 1. People set difficulties with the actual thought of what an expert in the field will have as an expected bonus rather than getting carried away with said target number, and 2. can get away from...

Or even if you make it much simpler, as elements of the complexity may make it more valuable to some of the prior fanbase. Its instructive to note that, though these don't tend to exist in other BRP derivatives, hit locations have been present in each edition of RuneQuest, including the three...

I don't agree about perception, but then you probably already know that. I think there are a few cases where information is obscure and whether a given character should know it is as well handled by a die roll as anything else, and where being particularly knowledgeable in the general subject...

I realized one of the reasons I had trouble answering this question is that, even with games I returned to, its been very rare for me to run one campaign of a given system to another with the same system, and that's ignoring the games that I'd gotten completely over for one reason or another to...

As someone said, its essentially an impossible task. Some of the people who love the concept and setting want something much leaner, while for others that would kill part of what they appreciate about it. Even among the latter there's a pretty visible bifurcation between fans of 1-3 and 4-5...

Again, this tends to be less pronounced when the system involved doesn't have massive swing in it. You also can frame things about the obscurity of the information to give them a better idea of how reliable the information is likely to be. And of course if the information isn't at least a...

Eh. I'm finishing up a 13th Age campaign, and 13th Age uses Backgrounds rather than skills (which is to say its pretty big and lumpy) and I can't say I've seen any real difference; its just a case of bigger hammers.

Which is why I don't have them make the actual die roll until the information is relevant and would probably be obvious in its lack.

Well, that's just skill lumping/splitting questions which is, I think, a bit of a different discussion than not using them at all.

But the problem is, some failures won't reveal that. You'll find out you've got it wrong--when you find it out. Missing information is sometimes anything but obvious.

I'll have to give SotWW a look in that regard. That's usually heavily wrapped around either spells (which SotWW does fairly differently than D&D) or limited use powers (which I don't recall SotWW having much of). But I'll try to give the spell system a quick lookover and see if there's a...

I'd have to do the "I know it when I see it" situation, and there'd be all kinds of ways for people to (legitimately) tell me I was full of it.

Well, I don't tend to use prewritten adventures, so that wouldn't even occur to me. I was thinking more in terms of what impact just deleting skills would have on things like the 3e rogue or bard..

It tends to be the way I do it too; after all, how would you know if you'd correctly got the information other than checking, and if you can do that a way other than when it matters, what was the point in the roll in the first place?