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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 6262372" data-attributes="member: 20323">The restriction on when (or if) players call for skill checks is a good example. It seems like there was a spectrum since 2e leading up to 3e and then into 4e of increasingly shifting the decision of when to make a skill check from the DM's side to the Player's side. To some extent maybe that's a good thing? It creates a common language (hopefully one not full of game jargon!) for players and DMs. You want to jump over the pit? OK, we both know how that gets resolved, so go ahead and make that Athletics or Jump check. I mean, there are no reasons I can think of when it would make sense for the DM to say, "No, you cannot make a check to jump this pit." It just doesn't make sense, because the Athletics or Jump skill very clearly maps to a character ability.However, things like Bluff, Diplomacy, History, Insight, and Perception are less clearly mapped to exclusively character skill, and involve player skill....or more precisely, player creativity.Maybe that's the driving point I'm trying to make: Player Creativity should be inspired & rewarded, and skills that involve ambiguous character vs. player skill should resolve that tension by designing toward the goal of inspiring & rewarding Player Creativity. From my observation of 4e, while I love the game, caused player creativity to diminish due to the extreme definition of character abilities and the unclear methods for improvising (yes they're there, but you need to work to find them).That's why I think the Apocalypse World / Dungeon World system of asking questions for Lore and Perception/Insight type skills is such a great idea. Those questions just spark creativity! And can lead to players dreading/imagining how to fill in the blanks, so while the setting authority still rests with the GM, the players are getting much more engaged with it because they have to choose which questions to ask (rather than just rolling a d20).Another example of a great idea is Rich Burlew's d20 Diplomacy hack. By making the check difficulty dependent on player creativity in regards to figuring out how to entice an NPC with an offer, it inspires and rewards players to think about their approach to using Diplomacy.Many folks talk about player skill vs. character skill being a difference between Old School and New School games as if they were oil & water, and while that trend may be there I think it washed over a more important commonality & distinction:Both types of games want to encourage and reward player creativity. It is just HOW they do that's different. Old School game do it by, essentially, constantly threatening your character and encouraging & rewarding you to avoid the lethal rules entirely. New School Games do it by encouraging & rewarding you to master the rules.All IMO here, but I am interested in rules that are little less "stick" without devolving into "entitlement / systems mastery". I like to think that ideas like Rich Burlew's Diplomacy skill and Dungeon World's Questions offer a way for the system to actually encourage players to work within a framework (without having to be an exhaustive system!) that encourages & rewards player creativity and improvisation.</blockquote>

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