NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Unwise" data-source="post: 6316859" data-attributes="member: 98008">After I started playing a very simple RPG called PDQ, I now take this approach to skills in my games. It works really well indeed. Just to give an example, I GM a Firefly campaign and some of the PC traits are as follows:- Preacherman (Religion, talking people down, guilt tripping, avoiding scrutiny etc)- Eye for Trouble (Perception in dangerous areas, streetwise, picking that something is not right in a tense gangland meeting)- Ex-Navy Pilot (Pilotting, military culture, interacting with jarheads, identifying military units, identifying ships capabilities, lingo)- Slum Doctor (Streetwise with the very poor, good reputation with down and outs, medical skills, street drugs)- Jock (Athletics, sports, getting on with meatheads, bullying the weak)The first trick is, I think, to stop trying to link them directly to traditional skills. The players need to be on the ball to suggest when their traits will come into effect. For instance, in my games the Shepherd sometimes uses his Preacherman trait to give him bonuses for smuggling stuff past customs guards. After all, nobody suspects the monk.Secondly, this works better with storyteller style players than power gamers. A powergamer will try for traits that are too broad and will allow profeciency bonus too often. The DM has to have a benchmark in his/her head that allows them to gauge how often a trait will come into play. For me, that benchmark is roughly as often as 2 D&D 5e skills at most. Otherwise, split it up.The final thing of note is that this style of skill system really fleshes out a character. It makes the player sit down and think about their history and personality. It also makes a lot more sense than a traditional skill system. Lets say my PC is an ex-NFL player, in the traditional system I would take Athletics skill and it has not added anything tangible to my characters persona. For instance, it would not give me any bonus to a persuasion roll performed in a sports bar. As a trait however ex-NFL player means that I have the local sports buffs eating out of my hand as I regail them with stories about the superbowl we almost won.I could go on for hours about the virtues of the PDQ skill system, I might even fork this off to a new thread to rant further.</blockquote>

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