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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Composer99" data-source="post: 8424229" data-attributes="member: 7030042">Two general remarks apropos of the developing conversations/subthreads:Decoupled skills:Even conceding that it is a PHB variant, decoupled skills are already in the 5e rules. Your player says "I want to do the thing", and the thing looks like, say, Constitution (Athletics), Strength (Intimidate), or Charisma (Arcana), you're already good to go. That said, there's nothing wrong to my mind with skills having a "key" or typical associated ability, representing the majority of typical uses of that skill. It comes down to how it's presented on the character sheet and how you explain it.FKR/freeform and skills:I prefer rules-heavier systems myself - around the level of complexity of 5e, to be precise - so I don't buy that FKR or other forms of freeform play are "the cure" for players not engaging with the in-game fiction as much as might be desired. Ideally, player character action writ large in any RPG starts from the fictional positioning, regardless of how rules-heavy or rules-light that game might be. However, players may not feel like engaging much with the in-game fiction at any given time (or at all), depending on their preferences or the circumstances, so I wouldn't force the issue - and here I think systems with more crunch have an advantage because there is a hook to engage with the fiction - at a superficial level but at some level nonetheless - even when players aren't committing to engage with the fiction (because they are playing at a beer-and-pretzels level of engagement, aren't feeling up to more engagement that game session, or what-have-you). "[My character name] uses Athletics to bash down the door" is just game-mechanics-ese for "I attempt to use my great strength to bash down the door", when you get down to it.More generally/philosophically/from-a-design-perspective-y, skills in an RPG represent, through mechanics, things that any given player character is good at compared to most other creatures in the game world. And in D&D 5e they are sufficiently broad that they are mostly described in the rules in terms of fictional positioning, and not in terms of concrete mechanical levers/buttons/what-have-you. They also have the convenience of being a single word with a checkbox on a character sheet plus a reference in the PHB (or maybe even on my DM screen) for when you need it. As a DM/GM, what I don't care for in ultra-light games is the absence of such mechanics. Meaning if a player and I agree that their character is good at "thing X" in a game I'm running, either I have to adjudicate each instance of "thing X" each time it comes up (and remember said adjudication, or remember to write down said adjudication), or the player character has to write down "what being good at thing X means" on their character sheet. And in that case...[ATTACH=full]145173[/ATTACH](That last part might be tongue-in-cheek, but not 100% tongue-in-cheek.)</blockquote>

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