NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8091944" data-attributes="member: 16814">I said they were things I do well.  I work in a customer environment that requires skill at reading people, so, yeah, you just showed that you don't read what I say or that you're willing to ignore it for the jab.This actually goes directly to the difference I've been trying to illuminate.  Intentionally placing challenges by looking at character skill selections is definitely one way to do it, and dovetails nicely into letting the players feel their skills matter, but only really has lots of value in games where asking for rolls is the approach most often used.  This is because you put out a challenge that expects the ask, and so everyone's rewarded.  It also leans into presenting a challenge with an expected solution.The other way is to not do this at all.  I honestly couldn't tell you what skills the PCs in my game actually have outside of a few -- I know the ranger has perception and nature and the wizard arcana, but I couldn't tell you much more than that.  I'm crafting a problem in my prep, one that doesn't have a solution planned by me, like the performance/singing challenge above.  Instead, I put obstacles down between where the PCs are and where they want to be and let them tell me how they're going to engage that problem. It might be that I present a situation where the PCs want to gain an audience with the king, but they don't have the social clout to do it, what are they going to do?  A PC might decide that gaining a noble patron is a good way to go, and so decides to sing to gain that patron's attention.  My initial framing has nothing to do with singing, and doesn't expect it, but the players have the freedom to approach the problem however they want and use the skills and abilities of their character.  This part of the approach is to frame problems, not solutions.  My player get good use of their skill choices not because I design challenges with those skills in mind, but because I don't and allow the freedom to approach the challenge to my players.Both are valid approaches, and engage the player choices, but how you do skills and how you structure challenges lead to very different play experiences.  One of these (or some other way) is the best way to play, and it's the one that's fun at your table.  They do result in very different play experiences, though, even though there are superficial differences.</blockquote>

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