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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RFisher" data-source="post: 3427931" data-attributes="member: 3608">I agree, Jer! But now I'm going to nitpick anyway... (^_^)Here's a list of some non-combat rules in the c. 1981 edition of D&D (Basic & Expert):<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">encumbrance</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">light</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">reaction rolls</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">morale (as applied to whether retainers stayed with you when you got back to town)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">opening doors</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">finding traps (by anyone, not just thieves)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">triggering traps</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">hearing noise (by anyone, not just thieves)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">finding secret doors</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the thief skills</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">encounter distance</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">ability score checks</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">getting lost in the wilderness</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">weather & its effect when sailing</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">establishing a stronghold</li> </ul>...& I'm sure I'd find some more if I had the books handy.Heck, the entire combat section of the encounter chapter is really only...what...about three, maybe four, pages.Mike Mornard sums up the two approaches as "anything not specifically forbidden is permitted" vs. "anything not specifically permitted is forbidden".(Although, I hesitate to see these as all-or-nothing categories. Likely, most of us bring a mix of those two approaches to the game.)I'm not so sure that the "anything not specifically permitted is forbidden" attitude was so prevalent among traditional wargames. Listening to grognard (people who played napoleonics on sand tables) war stories, some of them regularly went beyond the written rules. I'm not sure that much has changed between wargaming & roleplaying.I played classic Traveller before I played AD&D. Although it was a skill-based system, they were mostly just bonuses to your rolls rather than strict definitions of what your PC could do. Sure, sometimes we applied the -3 to -5 penalty to a roll for not having an appropriate skill, but that tended to be the exception rather than the rule. Even then, it was just a penalty, not "you can't do that because you don't have the skill". We also interpreted the skills pretty broadly. At least, that's how my group did it.</blockquote>

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