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Actually yah.

Problems also come along when people take "This is why I don't like it" as an attack.

A touch. A palpable touch. I've tried playing less conventional games. Maybe I'm just not smart enough to get them but I fundamentally do not like them. I have good friends who do and the play they describe seems like a string of disconnected moments with consequences keyed to maximize putative...

Welcome to the Internet. More seriously: The reactions of people who do not prefer this style of play to descriptions of it seem very similar to me to reactions of people who do not prefer more conventional play to descriptions of that. Serious discussions of more conventional play are...

The issue isn't that there's a check. The issue is that "make a Cooking check to avoid the bandits" seems to be to be ludicrous on its face and applying "the bandits are here now" as a consequence to a failed Cooking check turns the game situation into "make a Cooking check to avoid the...

But by having the bandits' arrival be the consequence of failing the cooking check you have essentially turned it into "make a cooking check to avoid attracting attention." Part of the point of any skill check is avoiding the consequence after all. I agree that the players shouldn't be...

You are correct. It is neither more or less illogical or incoherent than any other episode of TRPG play. Any and all reactions are purely about preferences.

Those numbers don't represent skill or ability. They represent how likely things are to go well for you when you test those things. It's like the "Discern Realities" move in Dungeon World. Being good at it doesn't make you more likely to see what's there. If it's important the MC will tell you...

Because the consequences aren't supposed to come from the characters being incompetent. Makes sense per what I've seen and read and played of these games which isn't a whole lot.

What happened at the table was the player rolled badly on a cooking check and the bandits appeared. What happened in the narrative was of course something more like the character attempting to prepare the rations lost control of the fire and thus attracted the tender ministrations of the local...

Actually what happened seems to have been the player asking to make a cooking check to avoid attracting the bandits' attention.

Hey there are some bandits around. Give me a cooking roll to see if you escape their notice.

Nice dodge.

So in those games do you think players in an area where bandits or other threats are known to be active would start by wanting to test cooking? Why wouldn't they start by finding or making a secure or hidden place to spend the night?

That's because you're looking at it backward. If you were calling for a test to see if the PCs could avoid drawing the attention of bandits known to be in the area would the first skill you called for be cooking?

The more granular the skills list is the more skills I should be able to acquire. The problem I remember from Call of Cthulhu was that there were a bunch of skills what were useless unless they were vital. It practically seemed like a theme in the game that we could have figured out the thing if...

Nah.

I am not a hardcore simulationist but I do tend to think that consequences should befit the task being accomplished. Testing Survival to camp inconspicuously should have different consequences than testing Cooking to prepare the next day's rations.

I could see narrating a failed Survival check in those circumstances as a decision that this was a perfect time to smoke some meat.

It's at least as plausible to me that the Survival check involved the decision whether to cook.