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<blockquote data-quote="Primal" data-source="post: 5470577" data-attributes="member: 30678">I just realized something; I've often compared SCs to conflict resolution in indie games, saying that the biggest difference between them is that SCs are too vaguely written. And based on this thread alone, it appears I'm not the only one who thinks that way. However, I'm not so sure about SCs being that vague anymore. You see, my library has Conspiracy of Shadows in its RPG collection (several copies of it, in fact), and a few days ago I decided to borrow it. First of all, I know how conflict resolution works, and I've tried some of the first-generation indie games, but I didn't get CoS at all. The mechanics are not very complex, but they're presented so horribly that it's a mess. Mechanics are glossed over pretty quickly to get to the &quot;juicy&quot; parts; it's as if the author expects you to be already intimately familiar with the rules, or at least the innermost principles of the Forge-style game design. Instead of concrete examples this game is all about flavour, with over half the book describing the default setting, Polian. No ready-to-run material, except for a single high-powered villain. No NPCs, confusing mook rules, not even coherently written guidelines to running conflicts (for example, the game doesn't even tell you which attributes to use for physical attack rolls). My head was swimming with questions after reading it, but in the end I decided to return it the next day. Alright, I'll better stop right there, because I'm about to go on an endless rant on how vague the rules are for an &quot;uninitiated&quot;. I just think it's a bit ironic that this was supposed to be the revised edition, released because the author thought the original rules were confusing and poorly presented. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/erm.png"&nbsp; class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":erm:" title="Erm&nbsp; &nbsp; :erm:" data-shortname=":erm:" />&nbsp;&nbsp; To repeat my point above: compared to CoS, skill challenges are not that vaguely presented after all! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Primal, post: 5470577, member: 30678"] I just realized something; I've often compared SCs to conflict resolution in indie games, saying that the biggest difference between them is that SCs are too vaguely written. And based on this thread alone, it appears I'm not the only one who thinks that way. However, I'm not so sure about SCs being that vague anymore. You see, my library has [I]Conspiracy of Shadows[/I] in its RPG collection (several copies of it, in fact), and a few days ago I decided to borrow it. First of all, I know how conflict resolution works, and I've tried some of the first-generation indie games, but I didn't get [I]CoS[/I] at all. The mechanics are not very complex, but they're presented so horribly that it's a mess. Mechanics are glossed over pretty quickly to get to the "juicy" parts; it's as if the author expects you to be already intimately familiar with the rules, or at least the innermost principles of the Forge-style game design. Instead of concrete examples this game is all about flavour, with over half the book describing the default setting, Polian. No ready-to-run material, except for a single high-powered villain. No NPCs, confusing mook rules, not even coherently written guidelines to running conflicts (for example, the game doesn't even tell you which attributes to use for physical attack rolls). My head was swimming with questions after reading it, but in the end I decided to return it the next day. Alright, I'll better stop right there, because I'm about to go on an endless rant on how vague the rules are for an "uninitiated". I just think it's a bit ironic that this was supposed to be the revised edition, released because the author thought the original rules were confusing and poorly presented. :erm: To repeat my point above: compared to [I]CoS[/I], skill challenges are not that vaguely presented after all! :) [/QUOTE]

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