Let's Talk About Core Game Mechanics

[Thomas Shey]

In general I'm not into skill systems....I love how Shadowdark handles it...but if there are going to be skills then I like that system to be unified with combat, instead of treating them entirely differently. In other words, skills should be a "core mechanic" and not something bolted on. (Looking at you, D&D...).

Well, D&D suffers from skills being a latecomer into the system. Even the 3e era attempt to make skills and the combat roll look somewhat similar was inevitably going to be kind of after the fact about it.

It's one of the things I like about Dragonbane: my Swords skill works exactly like my Bushcraft works exactly like my spellcasting skill. So are dodging and blocking. And progression in all those skills is the leveling.

Honestly that's more common farther you get away from the beginning of the hobby and/or games derived from those. Often that sort of structure is an artifact of the evolution of the system (as an example, the Hero System treats combat skills fairly radically different from other kinds of skills; that's again because the system it was originally derived from had a combat system but no skills, skills were then bolted on after the fact, and when the Hero System reworked that stuff into the actual system, it apparently didn't occur to anyone you could have essentially used the model of the combat roll to do other skills instead of doing what they did.)

Edit: This is often a problem with game systems that evolved organically over time, and where there was resistance to making the radical changes needed to bring everything under the same tent.

 

[JohnSnow]

Well, D&D suffers from skills being a latecomer into the system. Even the 3e era attempt to make skills and the combat roll look somewhat similar was inevitably going to be kind of after the fact about it.

(Snip)…

Edit: This is often a problem with game systems that evolved organically over time, and where there was resistance to making the radical changes needed to bring everything under the same tent.

It’s interesting that this is one of my conceptual problems with Nimble, although I deeply appreciate the attempt at simplification.

But combat now works differently than other skills. That feels like a step backwards.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It’s interesting that this is one of my conceptual problems with Nimble, although I deeply appreciate the attempt at simplification.

But combat now works differently than other skills. That feels like a step backwards.

Well, there are those that will argue that combat works different than other skills in 95% or more of games out there. And they aren't completely wrong, but that's more an artifact of the perceived importance of combat in most games than a strict necessity. As I've noted before, in most games if you wanted to you could expand a lot of skill usage into something as detailed as combat if you wanted to; the structure of the skills involved wouldn't stop you.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

By the way, if that is true (at least in regard to a roughly equal opponent) then TKD is nothing at all like boxing.

Yeah, it’s very different. I’d not expect to land more than 3-5 hits against an equivalent fighter. Against an Olympic contender I know from experience my expectation was zero, plus or minus zero.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think I'd have to disagree at least as broadly as you put it here.

As I've noted, in my younger days I was both a fencer and a martial artist (and the latter included some limited weapon techniques) and I actually thought that (of all things) the Hero System's engagement with melee felt reasonably authentic in how it dealt with engagement, interrupting othere's actions and so on. It only got down so far into fine detail, but if you described what was going on in non-mechanical (but still descriptive) terms, it'd fit reasonably well what I'd expect to see happen.

So I don't think I can follow you calling them all a "joke".

Seriously. That's IMO a very hot take.

 

[Scott Christian]

he problem with narrow skills even from a realism POV (and admittedly GURPS tries to address this with defaulting) is many skills are either closely related, or are extremely unlikely to pick up at a decent level without picking up certain other skills.

When I did my skills, I definitely pooled many of them together. It makes so much more sense to me. My History/Religion skill is an example. If you know your history, there is a good chance you know a bit about religion too. Nature/Creature is another one. If you have studied nature, there is a good chance you know a bit about the monsters of the land too. Balance/Sneak is one, where they could definitely be separated, but I have never met a player that only wanted one of those skills. So they're grouped to help the player. The only two that aren't grouped are arcana and resist.

 

[Scott Christian]

100% agree.

All RPGs are such terrible approximations of reality that it's hard to take seriously any claim of "realism" or "logic". Sure a 0.001% approximation is more realistic than a 0.0005% approximation. But....really? If somebody enjoys fiddling with the additional complexity, then have at it! Enjoy! But let's not kid ourselves that any of these are actually realistic.

To be fair, it was never about realism, but rather the sense of realism. There is a huge difference between the two, and everyone's line shifts as they grow in experiences.

 

[Reynard]

Others are likely to disagree, but I don't think emulation of reality is a worthy design goal at all. I think the primary, maybe only, design goal is to achieve what you intend in play. That probably reads as wishy-washy, but it is true. If you want your system to feel like gritty fiction, you design one way. If you want your system to feel like cinematic action heroism, you design another. But in very rare circumstances do people actually want their system to fell like "real life." And on top of that, "real life" is both boring and completely insane and very, very hard to emulate with system. I mean, just to use a standard old example: there are people who die falling off a step ladder, and people who survive multiple gunshot wounds. Model that.