Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9232226" data-attributes="member: 42582">I like and play games with different sorts of skill systems. They produce different sorts of play.4e D&amp;D has 17 skills: Athletics, Endurance, Acrobatics, Stealth, and Thievery are the physical skills; Arcana, History and Religion are the principal knowledge skills; Dungeoneering, Healing and Nature have both intellectual and applied components; then Insight, Perception, Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidation and Streetwise round out the list.Marvel Heroic RP has 13 &quot;specialties&quot; which function somewhat like skills: Acrobatics, Business, Combat, Cosmic, Covert, Criminal, Medical, Menace, Mystic, Psych, Science, Tech, Vehicle. (Of course characters also have their various super powers.)By way of contrast, Burning Wheel has dozens of skills - well over two-hundred, in fact. Some of these overlap - eg rather than Herbalism skill, Elves use the Song of Soothing; and in addition to Oratory, religious characters may learn Religious Diatribe - and some are very detailed - eg around a quarter of the skills on the list are various sorts of crafting, with (say) Blacksmithing distinguished from White-(=silver-)smithing distinguished from skill as a Jeweller.The 4e skill list creates broadly competent characters, with skill challenges resolved in terms of broad approach and evoking core D&amp;D fantasy tropes. MHRP is similarly colourful, albeit with differently-themed colour.The BW list, on the other hand, sits within a broader framework that easily handles similar skills, one skill augmenting another (via easily-calculated bonus dice), a standard system for unskilled use (&quot;Beginner's Luck&quot;); and it produces gritty and &quot;focused&quot; play experiences that are completely different from 4e or MHRP. Neither of those latter systems makes (say) repairing a dent in one's armour, or (as a necromancer) performing taxidermy on a corpse a big deal at the table; BW can, if one wants.I don't accept that there is some &quot;ideal&quot; number of skills that optimises verisimilitude and playability. Science fiction films include Star Wars and Gravity (and Blade Runner, and 2001, and The Martian, and . . . ). We don't need to posit some sort of &quot;ideal&quot; of tropes or &quot;realism&quot; to measure all these against. RPGs are no different, in my view: there is room in the world for many of them, with different sorts of systems and character descriptors and so on aimed at producing different sorts of play.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 9232226, member: 42582"] I like and play games with different sorts of skill systems. They produce different sorts of play. 4e D&D has 17 skills: Athletics, Endurance, Acrobatics, Stealth, and Thievery are the physical skills; Arcana, History and Religion are the principal knowledge skills; Dungeoneering, Healing and Nature have both intellectual and applied components; then Insight, Perception, Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidation and Streetwise round out the list. Marvel Heroic RP has 13 "specialties" which function somewhat like skills: Acrobatics, Business, Combat, Cosmic, Covert, Criminal, Medical, Menace, Mystic, Psych, Science, Tech, Vehicle. (Of course characters also have their various super powers.) By way of contrast, Burning Wheel has dozens of skills - well over two-hundred, in fact. Some of these overlap - eg rather than Herbalism skill, Elves use the Song of Soothing; and in addition to Oratory, religious characters may learn Religious Diatribe - and some are very detailed - eg around a quarter of the skills on the list are various sorts of crafting, with (say) Blacksmithing distinguished from White-(=silver-)smithing distinguished from skill as a Jeweller. The 4e skill list creates broadly competent characters, with skill challenges resolved in terms of broad approach and evoking core D&D fantasy tropes. MHRP is similarly colourful, albeit with differently-themed colour. The BW list, on the other hand, sits within a broader framework that easily handles similar skills, one skill augmenting another (via easily-calculated bonus dice), a standard system for unskilled use ("Beginner's Luck"); and it produces gritty and "focused" play experiences that are completely different from 4e or MHRP. Neither of those latter systems makes (say) repairing a dent in one's armour, or (as a necromancer) performing taxidermy on a corpse a big deal at the table; BW can, if one wants. I don't accept that there is some "ideal" number of skills that optimises verisimilitude and playability. Science fiction films include Star Wars and Gravity (and Blade Runner, and 2001, and The Martian, and . . . ). We don't need to posit some sort of "ideal" of tropes or "realism" to measure all these against. RPGs are no different, in my view: there is room in the world for many of them, with different sorts of systems and character descriptors and so on aimed at producing different sorts of play. [/QUOTE]

Verification