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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5577856" data-attributes="member: 54877">Here is another assertion:  All the problems with skills come at the intersections. I think it is correct (that is, not merely being devil's advocate here), but I don't think I can prove it.  I admit it is as much intuition as anything else, but based on several years trying to make rules in a homebrew that gets around the problem, and scanning other games for solutions.  AbdulAlhazred had this one one his list, but I think all the other issues stem from it. The usual place the "intersection" problem is first recognized is profession skills--or sometimes, craft or knowledge instead.  For example, take Fantasy Hero.  If you have Profession: Hunter and Knowledge: Wilds of the Western Kingdom and several of the standard skills that feature in "survival"--stealth, concealment, etc--then it is easy to run across a situation where it is not clear which skill will govern. And even if you happily smooth out the rough edges at your table, fact is that "Aid Another" or "Default" type resolutions don't typically satisfy the players--there are almost always laughably unimportant or dreadfully earth shattering.  You'll run into the same problem with most any Profession, and not a few Crafts and Knowledges.  But it doesn't even stop there.  See the debate on 3E having 4 skills for stealth and opposing perception, versus more streamlined options.  Just why is "Bluff" not a subset of "Diplomacy"?  How much of engaging in trade is merchant training versus appraisal versus bargaining versus something else?  Should merchant training even be relegated to a profession or be represented as a main skill? Fantasy Hero doesn't solve the problem.  It bypasses it by being a system where you get points in dribs and drabs, and can use them how you see fit.  That is, if PS: Hunter isn't all that great, neither is it terrribly expensive in the scheme of things--and by good selection of such skills, you may not get to use a particular one that often, but the set will matter.  So this fits into Danny's point of if you are going to do this, better to have a long list. Part of 3E's failure was that it went for a FH design, but wanted to limit the list more sharply, because of concerns that D&D wasn't about skills.  3.5 consolidation, towards what was 4E, made this fairly clear.   4E doesn't solve this problem.  It bypasses it by being a system where this is all background and rolled into primary skill by narrative.  Burning Wheel doesn't solve this problem.  It bypasses it by being a system with deliberately somewhat overlapping skills and a huge push in the mechanics to figure out a way to make work whatever happens to be on your character sheet (and by supporting that push with mechanics that supplement skills). Shadow Run style specialization doesn't solve this problem.  It bypasses it by creating two mechanical tiers, one for specialists and one for generalists, so that whichever way your particular concept/reality buttons are being pushed, you've got an out. That is, everyone tries to cover it up with color/flavor.  And I'm not at all sure that for a given system, that isn't the best choice.  I've yet to see a system that really bores down into the core skills of humanity, without too much complication.  All else being equal, Typists learn to play Piano marginally easier than others.  And vice versa.  So there is some skill to manipulating things with your hands.  I'm sure you can think of a 100 other things that depend upon it.  Facility with language--likewise.  Consider dealing with abstract concepts, and what it affects (and could affect in Fantasy).  (Also consider physical limitations.  I'm a decent pianist.  But my hands simply aren't big enough to be really good.  I can't quite reach the octave and a third necessary to do some fingerings correctly.) We can try to collapse those into attributes, but we all know how the discussion goes on "Dexterity" versus "Agility" versus "Manual Dexterity" and so on.   When I said that we all handwave skill mechanics in the narrative, this is what I was referring to.  We hit some intersection that doesn't quite make sense (to us or the game world or game play or whatever), and we try to smooth it over.  The statement frequently made that, "a good GM will find a way to make [apparently marginal skill] useful in play since you have it,"  is an admission that the handwave is necessary.  It just doesn't seem to allow for the idea that perhaps a "good GM" would find a way to houserule around the handwaving if it chafed that much, or perhaps choose a different system that didn't chafe so much. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/ponder.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":hmm:" title="Hmmm    :hmm:" data-shortname=":hmm:" /></blockquote>

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