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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 5733520" data-attributes="member: 3400">I actually get the impression that some people are saying that in this conversation.I'm not even sure that's possible, at the end of the day. All RPGs, even if you roll tasks constantly, revolve around the player's ability to manipulate his character effectively and creatively - requiring use of his own knowledge and skills. And I don't think we completely want to remove that from the game either. If the character being played doesn't have some essential spark of the player involved, making an interesting story through individual decision-making, it might as well be a board game governed entirely by rolling dice or some other randomizer like cards in Uncle Wiggly or Candyland.Oh, I'll always give the player a chance to try it in character role play before I roll it. If it's a particularly difficult intellectual challenge (and face it, reciting off the cuff poetry in a typical gamer group is a little ballsy), I'll be inclined to give a +2 circumstance bonus for being game enough to try it. If they do really well, I'll double that bonus. Then we'll roll using the character's inherent abilities and skills.Depends on which edition of the game you're playing. I can think of a few that do have appropriate skills for it that can be directly invested in. My wife played a half-ogre cook in our Shackled City campaign and got into a bake-off challenge for the Flood Festival against the chef of a noble house. She had invested in the right skill and did well against an expert with skill focus in the same skill. She didn't win, but she still made a great impression on the crowd and got quite a bit of reputation.See, by doing this, I think the PCs are already making use of the players' abilities. In this case, with no poetry skill, the ability to make a smarter/wiser decision without resorting to some mechanic based on intelligence or wisdom.I think it's all well and good to rely on a PC's inherent abilities for the bulk of an individual task resolution, but I'm pretty much always going to reward good ideas based on a player's own abilities with bonuses. And if the idea is good enough, I'll skip rolling the dice entirely and just say yes.</blockquote>

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