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<blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 7566318" data-attributes="member: 75787">Interestingly, when introducing kids to roleplaying, I have found that n matter what system you start with, they start thinking in terms of aspects and have to be trained if the system uses skills. As an example, I ran D&amp;D for some kids and a typical conversation would go:PLAYER: I look for animal tracksGM: Make a roll unit the tracking skillPLAYER: Wait ... why am I not good at that? I should be because I'm a RangerAlmost invariably, players conceptualized their character in terms of aspects. If they were a &quot;DWARVEN FIGHTER&quot; they would assume that they could speak dwarven, know stuff about stone, fight with an axe and hate elves. The whole skills idea seems not to be a good model for how people think -- for the novice player, skills are an annoying feature that needs to be managed to make their character feel like the aspects they have in mind when they think of their character. Many, many times I have heard novice role-players complain that a skill should be changed because of their aspect. I don't think I've ever heard anyone suggest that they change their aspects based on their skills: &quot;I seem to have a lot of thievery and intriusion skills -- maybe I should be a thief?&quot; &lt;-- This doesn't happen.I believe (I am not an expert) that this actually the way our minds work for storing inforamtion -- as a set of related concepts that have been built up by examples of &quot;typical&quot; such things. So, my currently thinking is that aspects (what your character IS) are more fundamental to roleplaying, and that skills and abilities (what your character DOES) is a secondary thing. That might well be why rules-light games simply stop at the first, whereas rules heavy games almost always have BOTH.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Gorgon Zee, post: 7566318, member: 75787"] Interestingly, when introducing kids to roleplaying, I have found that n matter what system you start with, they start thinking in terms of aspects and have to be trained if the system uses skills. As an example, I ran D&D for some kids and a typical conversation would go: PLAYER: I look for animal tracks GM: Make a roll unit the tracking skill PLAYER: Wait ... why am I not good at that? I should be because I'm a Ranger Almost invariably, players conceptualized their character in terms of aspects. If they were a "DWARVEN FIGHTER" they would assume that they could speak dwarven, know stuff about stone, fight with an axe and hate elves. The whole skills idea seems not to be a good model for how people think -- for the novice player, skills are an annoying feature that needs to be managed to make their character feel like the aspects they have in mind when they think of their character. Many, many times I have heard novice role-players complain that a skill should be changed because of their aspect. I don't think I've ever heard anyone suggest that they change their aspects based on their skills: "I seem to have a lot of thievery and intriusion skills -- maybe I should be a thief?" <-- This doesn't happen. I believe (I am not an expert) that this actually the way our minds work for storing inforamtion -- as a set of related concepts that have been built up by examples of "typical" such things. So, my currently thinking is that aspects (what your character IS) are more fundamental to roleplaying, and that skills and abilities (what your character DOES) is a secondary thing. That might well be why rules-light games simply stop at the first, whereas rules heavy games almost always have BOTH. [/QUOTE]

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