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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5574784" data-attributes="member: 54877">Pace Mallus, if all it is is a "flag", then just have flags.  I don't need flags artificially embedded into the mechanics of the skill system in order to tell me what the players are interested in.  Just have flags. OTOH, if the skills are more than that, they are supposed to represent some kind of mechanical heft (e.g. Danny's example of not everyone is an equally good musician, or any other kinds of heft you want), then they should do that well. This is exactly what I've been talking about with throwing everything that has a patina of "skill" into the same bucket, and thinking that because you can describe it as a "skill", and you have a "skill system", that it belongs there. What is particular annoying about it in D&D and similarly abstract games is that it isn't even consistent.  I can kind of see it in something like Runequest or Burning Wheel or Hero or GURPS or even Toon (to name some widely divergent examples).  You've got "skills" and pretty much everything drives off it--including fighting.  But in D&D, "weapon skill" and "sneak/diplomacy/knowledge/athletics/etc." are already in different mechanical categories.  So despite the fact that, in heroic fantasy, "sword skill" and "sneak skill" are of similar important, story heft, character scope, and so forth, it is somehow important to separate them?  Hmm.  OK.  But we'll have Pinky the Bard's dabbling in painting represented by ... lumping it in with regular skills? It's a "level of abstraction error"--like talking about building a house of out of paint molecules, lumber, and rooms--true if you squint at it in an odd way with your tongue hanging out, but not if you think about it very long--and certainly not the correct model for either the chemist, the builder, or the home owner. Using 3E-type skills for craft and profession as flags only works when you handwave the abstraction error away.  So yes, you can compensate for the poor design and get something out of it, but nothing that you couldn't also get from a better system.  And if you want them to be more than flags, you sure as heck are compensating for the way they don't really represent what they purport to represent very well, and aren't mechanically scoped correctly for the subject matter in simulation nor gamist terms. The only way a person pretends not to handwave in this situation is to move back and forth between using them as flags and as something more.  We'll use them for something more right up until they break; then we'll use them for flags.  We'll use them for nothing but flags right up until we want to make mechanical distinctions with heft; at which point we'll squit, move real fast, and then move on.  Pay no attention to the left hand while the right hand is doing its thing. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> That groups manage to use this effectively is a testament to the way the human brain can adapt poor tools and get something worthwhile out of it anyway.  Yea for us!  But it is still a surpremely ill-informed and crappy addition to the skill system. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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