Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="gribble" data-source="post: 7688670" data-attributes="member: 12430">The main issue with the approach you outlined, is that it pretty much eliminates niche protection. If you set the DC too low (such as in the DC 0 examples you give), then any player can find the important clue tied to (for example) a Religion check, making the cleric feel like he is superfluous in an area where he should shine. Set it high enough so that characters other than the cleric will have a hard time discovering it, and once again you'll have a (perhaps low, but certainly non-zero) chance the cleric will fail and the plot will stall. Sure you can introduce house rules, like requiring training in the relevant skill (and although commonly used, this has been a house rule in the last couple of editions of D&D) but then you can no longer claim "D&D handles this already".For things like knowing about religious stuff, the cleric really shouldn't fail, for guiding a group through the wilderness to an ideal observation spot the ranger really shouldn't fail, for sneaking up behind some suspicious characters and eavesdropping on their conversation the rogue shouldn't really fail, etc. (you can assume a caveat that there might be times it's appropriate for these things to fail due to the needs of the story). Conversely, the non-cleric/non-ranger/non-rogue really shouldn't have much of a shot normally at succeeding in these sorts of things.Gumshoe does this really well - if your explosives expert looks around the scene of a crime, he automatically uncovers the important information (e.g.: the explosive seems to be an obscure type which is only available to the military) , and no-one else has a chance of uncovering it. He also has the option of getting less crucial, but still useful information (e.g.: there are some components of a short range receiver - clearly the bomb was detonated remotely from a nearby location). It makes experts in certain areas really feel like they should, without rendering their expertise irrelevant by making it possible for anyone to get the info.As for why it isn't more widely used? I agree with those saying it probably isn't well known enough. People may have heard of NBA or ToC, but most probably don't know the name of the common system is Gumshoe. Of those that do, most probably don't know that it is an Open System - I knew about Gumshoe, but didn't realise it was open until reading this article, so thanks for that!</blockquote>

Verification