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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5620520" data-attributes="member: 82106">Aye, you've put it quite a bit better than I have. No productive discussion can happen when it is on the level of "that's shoddy!" where we're talking about a largely subjective set of perceived values. We can talk about what we like and what we don't like, and we can talk about the ways we use different games as tools to get the play experiences we desire, and we can talk about the differences between the things we want from a game. Talking about how shoddy one person's preferences are has nothing to do with any of that. Nor is it in any way shape or form a respectful way to speak on that kind of subject. Anyway, enough of all that. IMO 4e is built on the concept that skills represent not so much what a character has studied or techniques they use, modus operandi, but much more what sort of things they do. A character with a high Bluff and Insight is a facile liar and student of human nature. A character with a high Athletics is physical, they're the type who solves problems by physical action. I don't think stripping that away is really helpful and I think Mike missed a whole point there, or at least he hasn't touched on it yet. I've found the 4e skill system to be a really useful set of RP tools for this very reason. Whether or not you know how to play the lute is a detail. It can be an important detail if you want it to be, but it isn't something that changes any fundamental ability to accomplish things that are central to the game. So it doesn't require being bought with some pool of resources like a skill. It is simply something you add to the background of your character.</blockquote>

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