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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 8999291" data-attributes="member: 7026617">It also does to concretely model distinction without the player having to "die for their art" to do it.  This can seem pretty trivial to people who don't care about it, and there's absolutely no requirement that someone do care about it (at least to any given degree), but it can very much matter to some people at least some of the time.This is why various games lumping and splitting choices in terms of things like attributes and skills vary so much.  Things like whether the skill is "Guns" or "Rifles, Shotguns, SMGs and Pistols" can serve different masters, as can things like whether it's "Constitution" or "Durability, Health and Endurance".  There are also compromise positions (where its "Guns" but "Pistols" can be a specialization you take that gives some specific benefit when using that class of weapon.I tend to concur.  It also does one other things; like a lot of mechanics it much more specifically sets people on the same page.  This is one of those things I think is often shrugged off as handled properly by in-play communication, but I think that ignores that that either requires a very high bandwidth of communication (i.e. the player asking the GM things with sufficient frequency that many people would find it annoying over time on either end of the exchange) and that often you're making decisions far earlier in the process that it turns on than when the actual choice of resolution comes up (its much easier to expect that you can do something with finding a source for a black-market item when you have a high skill Streetwise than if you're going to depend on an uncertain character trait when it rolls around).I'm also on record as saying that the problem with the distinction between combat and noncombat actions is the opposite of what many people will say; not that combat is too detailed  and narrow in how its handled, but that other things are too broad and indistinct.That said, there's handling issues both in terms of time and processing involved with all of this, so I understand why people don't always want to do it to the degree I find satisfactory.  I just wish more people would understand there's genuine value in doing so to some of us, we're not just wanting complexity for its own sake.</blockquote>

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