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<blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 9550009" data-attributes="member: 75787">Nice article. I have run games using several systems for younger players, and this was the trickiest thing for them. Traditional RPGs define a character, essentially, in terms of what they can do - skills.&nbsp; But players don't think of their characters as &quot;what actions they can take&quot;; they think in terms of &quot;who they are&quot;. So, when running D&amp;D for some young teens, they'd say things like &quot;but I'm a ranger, why can't I use herbs to heal someone?&quot;.For me, you have nailed the biggest issue with skill lists -- mismatching skills against character concepts. So rather than starting with a situationist approach to try and cover all options evenly with a good taxonomy, maybe instead start by thinking about the character classes / archetypes / whatever and ensure that your skill lists allow each class to have a clear set of skills.Also, if you have the full traditional &quot;skills + stats&quot; system, give the GM permission to use different stats for a skill when it makes sense, so that evaluating a sword's quality uses SWORD + INT rather than a default SWORD + DEX.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Gorgon Zee, post: 9550009, member: 75787"] Nice article. I have run games using several systems for younger players, and this was the trickiest thing for them. Traditional RPGs define a character, essentially, in terms of what they can do - skills. But players don't think of their characters as "what actions they can take"; they think in terms of "who they are". So, when running D&D for some young teens, they'd say things like "but I'm a ranger, why can't I use herbs to heal someone?". For me, you have nailed the biggest issue with skill lists -- mismatching skills against character concepts. So rather than starting with a situationist approach to try and cover all options evenly with a good taxonomy, maybe instead start by thinking about the character classes / archetypes / whatever and ensure that your skill lists allow each class to have a clear set of skills. Also, if you have the full traditional "skills + stats" system, give the GM permission to use different stats for a skill when it makes sense, so that evaluating a sword's quality uses SWORD + INT rather than a default SWORD + DEX. [/QUOTE]

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