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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 9203314" data-attributes="member: 710">The cooking discussion feels kinda like one of those EN World endless discussion cycles that stopped adding meaningful to the discussion on page 2 of 20. Every relevant argument has already been exchanged, anyone without an opinion or idea on the topic has enough material to read and learn about the concept, and anyone that already had an opinion and hasn't changed it at page 2 isn't going to on page 20 either.---Back to the topic in the title.My first roleplaying game was Shadowrun 3E. I remember making my first character, which was inspired thematically be Léon the Professional. Then I had to make some kind of Stealth roll and I realized I hadn't even trained that and didn't understand beforehand that this skill was kinda important - both for the character I had in mind, and for typical Shadowrun games.Another thing I realized over time was that skills that you didn't max out were kinda useless.Now, this was my first RPG experience, so I was really just a noob and overwhelmed by a complex rule system and a new paradigm of playing, so probably no system could adequately prepare me for this.But, anyways, my lessons from this and later games.I like a list of skills that isn't too long, with each skill covering sufficient ground that if you imagine your character good at certain things, you know which skills to pick and don't get any surprises that some aspect isn't covered by the skills you have. So I'd rather have Perception than Spot and Listen or Stealth than Hide and Move Silently.What also help if there are purely descriptive "meta" groups. Like "these are social skills" "these are combat skills" "these are technical skills". They help navigating the system and make it easier to create characters as you envision them.I don't want too much granularity in skill ratings, especially if low ratings don't do much to differ from being just clueless about a skill.Things I learned later:I kinda aesthetically prefer combat "skills" to be part of the skill system, and not seperated, but I can accept it either way. D&D since 3E at least for example uses the skill system for "non-fighting" skills, and proficiencies for fighting skills. You don't have a Swordmanship skill, you are proficient with Longswords.I like characters to be able to rely on skills they are good at. They really shouldn't fail common tasks, within reason. A soldier will miss shots in a firefight, but if he's well trained, he won't miss a stationary target at target practice at lall, and it's really more about how many bull's eyes he's hitting than anything else. And an experienced climber isn't going to break his neck while trying to scale a 10 ft wall. (so definitely no fumble rules for me.)And I learned from Gumshoe system that sometimes its best if a skill can't be failed at all. Investigative skills or skill uses should probably always reveal clues, and if there is any failure at all, it should be about the cost and risks, because not giving the players the clues is typically going to make things less interesting than more.</blockquote>

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