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Message: <blockquote data-quote="catastrophic" data-source="post: 5636285" data-attributes="member: 81381">I certainly agree that skills should be core, but I don't think that in turn leads to skills having to be redrawn for each module. Consider the following: what if each module that used skills did so in a uniform fashion? This is again where abstracting things is useful. For instance, if the skill portion of each module was built on the same 'skill challenge' chassis, each one based on the same system, in other words. So wether you are building a castle, or sailing acros the ocean, or doing social combat, you're always going to be rolling skills vs dc to get sucesses, based within a framing mechanism like a general 'stakes and points' system which allows people to say, increase risk at the possible cost of more resources. And again, as noted before, those resources are standardised, even if they're split into subsystems.  That doesn't mean different modules won't feel different- within that system, the DM might decide that, for instance, building a castle is pretty steady reliable work about building up successes and spending resource points across rounds (which could take weeks of game time), while sailing through a hurricane is a high-stakes affair where resources are spend if and when it becomes a matter of life and death. And specifc to each module, you could have differences too- if you're halfway trhough your successes for sailing your pirae ship out of a storm, you're still only halfway home. But if you're generated half the successes to build your castle, you're probably able to plonk down your gatehouse or keep- you just don't have the curtain wall done yet. And this could work for grand rituals, social combat, and so on. A unified resolution mechanic (which is vital in any event), but one which can be tweaked and altered to provide proper feel for various modules.  And if you wanted to, you could add module-specific subskills with each module, and simply let people grab a subskill each time a new module was accessed. You could do rewrites of character skill lists, as well. Each subskill could be based on a stat, or based on a 'broad' skill like athletics. And look, I say this as somebody who feels that modular design is a lot easier said than done, and may be impossible. But there are ways to get things done, even if they would not lead to everyone buying the product, which is clearly what they're hoping for. You may well be right, but I think it's interesting to discuss the options. To me the way to solve that is to keep those relations simple. This would also mean that the subsystems were really meaingful. I'm not talking about buying more weapons with resources either- i'm talking about things like action points and healing surges, which many GMs already use to adjudicate out-of-combat events. The interactions in such a suystem would be limited to two, optional forms. One, points converting- EG, magic points become resource, points, when a wizard builds their castle using magic. Two, stakes and scenes- EG, if you have an army at your back, or cast a grand teleportation spell, the system would recognise that effct, not in terms of how easy it is to win a fight, but what might be at stake in this battle. This is part of why a stakes system would be needed- it allows for this kind of give and take. And notably, these relations would be optional.  In the system I envision, a GM would be able to rule that, say Wound Points and Action Points don't interact with other points, meaning they would only be used in combat.  In another game, if the pcs want to say use magic points to boost their physical reserves (by converting them to Wound Points), within reason, and assuming a decently balanced system that made getting those magic points pretty challenging, I don't have a problem with that, if that's the playstyle that DM and group are after.</blockquote>

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