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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5693849" data-attributes="member: 54877">Not speaking for anyone else, a lot of my criticism is directed from the perspective of the ideal, and with an appreciation for what other games have done to push design, since D&D first came on the scene. This in no way implies that I think the products being criticized were, relatively speaking, poor. So, for example, I can write 5,000 words on why the 3E skill system is poor, from multiple angles--as a skill system for D&D in general, and for 3E in particular. But in the context of what the 3E designers had to work with, their concerns about embedding as much D&D tradtion as possible, and so forth--I'll readily admit that it was decent enough for what it was. It doesn't drag down 3E into some unplayable mess--far from it. It's biggest problem is that it is trying to do something impossible--simultaneously please several audiences with mutually exclusive preferences. But I'm not sure that problem could have been easily identified without hindsight. The 3E skill system is very obviously a 1.0 version (after prototypes, betas, and alphas such as the NWP system). As an ideal, it is lacking. As a 1.0 version--I've seen much worse. (And 4E is very much a 2.0, with all that implies. Most products aren't really hitting their full stride until 3.0, and then incremental improvements happen from there.) <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /> The 3E skill system is about as good a skill system as the 4E skill-challenge system is a structured narrative framework. Both are 1.0.</blockquote>

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