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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The_Gneech" data-source="post: 4528952" data-attributes="member: 6779">The whole "skills for crafting" and "mechanics to encourage RP" question is sort of hard to explain to people who don't instinctively get it; but to some extent, it's a matter of focus.When you create an RPG character, you have a limited amount of resources with which to build it; allocating those resources is one way to prioritize that character's interests and experience.I forget which game it was now, but there was one RPG that mentioned in the gamemastering section that the GM should be familiar with the PCs' character sheets not just for the number-crunching of "will this encounter kill 'em" but also as a guide for what sorts of adventures the player wants to take part in. Somebody who has poured a lot of resources into being a good swimmer (to pick a random example) is going to be disappointed by a campaign that takes place in the desert. Obviously, they want to swim! Or at the very least, expect to swim.So if somebody makes a point of allocating their character's limited resources to, just to grab an example from elsewhere, "Perform (Haiku)," you can reasonably expect that the player wants the performance of haiku to feature somehow. A feat, even more so! If somebody is willing to burn one of their precious feats on "Skill Focus: Perform (Haiku)" then it stands to reason that they value having their character be "a great hiaku composer" far more than they would, say, being able to fight with two weapons.The recurring refrain from some corners of "So go play GURPs/HERO then!" is particularly frustrating for a number of reasons (1), not the least of which is that the core d20 system is a perfectly good system and there's no good reason why it can't easily support that style of play -- it's just that for whatever reason some people don't want it to. Heck, Star Wars Saga Edition supports that style of play beautifully by simply starting from the assumption that everybody is decent in combat, so allocating character resources to highly personalized skill sets doesn't debilitate you as much as it might in D&D.-The Gneech <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" />(1) On top of the whole "externalities" thing about finding a group, the availability of resources for the time-strapped GM, and all that jazz. "Go play GURPs/HERO!" is the gaming equivalent of "Let 'em eat cake."</blockquote>

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